The Before
by FallingStarXan
Summary: An enemy of the Doctor locks the TARDIS in reverse, sending it back before the Big Bang. Full story contains an epic countdown, unfashionable suits, TARDIS eyecandy, and more. ON HIATUS. Also, don't read this unless you're just curious about my progress as a writer.
1. The Most Difficult Part

The most difficult part is always the beginning.

Very hesitantly, the pencil touched its tip to the paper. It recoiled then, leaving a tiny black mark. A rubber eraser came down upon the mark and obliterated it, and the side of a hand brushed the pink scraps away onto the floor. The lined sheet was completely blank except for a stain mark from a moist arm having rested upon it for a long time, and a dark smudge in the leftmost corner of the top row.

The hand descended again and wrote the word '_the_.' It erased it, sweeping away another pile of eraser dust, and rewrote it more neatly.

The pencil tip broke on the hook of the 'e,' and a little comet of graphite appeared on the page. Out of habit, the hand tried to wipe this away too, but left a long smudgy streak. So the fingers twirled, and out came the eraser once again, with more salmon-shaded shavings drifting off the paper and adding to the growing pile. Then, annoyed, the hand crushed up the paper and picked a new sheet.

"Could you please stop _doing_ that! It's very distracting, and it's also absolutely _disgusting!_"

"I'm _writing!_" exclaimed the wielder of the pencil indignantly, as if this excused anything. "You're interrupting my creative flow!"

"Oh? _Reallllly_?" The word was drawn out over a span of many 'l's with an exaggerated Estuary English inflection. With a _queep_ and a _clunk_, a switch was thrown back and a lever clicked into place like the clutch of a car put into 'park'. The ambient noise died away, and the light lost its blue tinge. Sneakers danced on the warm grille that was the floor over to the seated young woman with the paper and pencil. The tall man leaned over her shoulder. "Oooh, look, you've _written_ something. That's new. And is that the word '_the_' I see before me? Such genius! I'm astounded! All those crumpled pages and all those shredded erasers all over _my_ floor really _were_ worth it, then!"

The interruption then snatched away the flat object the woman had been using as a desk. "Where did you get this?" he asked, expression crumpling in suspicion. "Is this what I think it is?" He turned it over in his hand, rubbing the edges with his thumb. "You've been _sitting_ with _this_ all this time? Haven't got any particularly violent urges at all? A sense of objectivism or supremacy, maybe?"

"If it's dangerous, why was it just lying around?" The woman brushed a long lock of wavy walnut hair back behind her ear, where it had slipped from her long braid.

"Well, it's not _dangerous_... okay, first of all, that's a really _daft_ question, Xan, considering where you are, and second of all, it's not actually _dangerous_, it just... I don't know... _could_ be..."

Alexandra Russell, paleogenticist, xenoarcheologist, and former Time Lady, paused and pursed her lips. "Why?" she asked, mildly irritated, and started to unfold. She was long-limbed and broad-shouldered and while she probably couldn't pass off as a full-grown man her body must not have tried very hard at being a woman. She was pretty nevertheless, or at least a few features if isolated would be, and had the kind of personality that had hijacked her physical appearance and made her look exactly like herself, and nothing else.

"Did you touch anything _electric_ at all?" the man went on, ignoring her question. "Open socket sort of thing?" The man put the coppery slab of metal in a crate by his feet with care. This box was legendary; it supposedly had a lump of dark matter crammed in the bottom somewhere, giving the crate a mass of nearly a ton.

After pretending to think this over, Xan came to an answer. "Funny you should mention it," she said. "No, I didn't."

"It's just not such a good idea to use dalekanium as a _writing desk_. For all we know, that's what Ayn Rand did, and look what happened to her."

"Something _happened_ to her?" asked Xan eagerly, now chewing on her pencil as though it was a stalk of wheat and she a Texas cowpoke.

"I really shouldn't tell you... This isn't a campfire, Star-girl, no time for spooky stories. Was that what you were writing, by the way?"

"What, a thriller? No. I was going to write a poem. And don't call me..."

"A _poem?_ Was it about _me?_ That's so sweet. I'm very touched." He reached for one of the balls of writing.

Xan snatched it from him before he could unfold it, gathered up the crumpled sheets of paper around her and dove for the door. She opened it a crack, leaned next to it, and tossed the sheets out into the intertemporal ether. "They weren't about you, Doctor," she said. "But you can't read them." The blue door clicked shut.

Raising an eyebrow, the lanky, handsome Time Lord leaned back, propping himself against the cluttered surface of the console. "You don't know where those'll end up," he told Xan, relaxing and adding with a lofty tone, "Or _when_. Who knows? One of them might land in the primordial ooze and disrupt the natural history of Earth." He grinned.

"Might just cause it, though. Who's to know?"

"Well, we could go find out." The Doctor touched a switch with his index finger, applying very slight pressure to it in an inviting way.

"I need to finish my poem first," said Xan. "You just wait."

Rolling his eyes, the Doctor propelled himself off the console and said, "For a few _decades_."

"The beginning's the hardest part," the girl told him haughtily. "I won't take long."

"Need any ideas? I could write you the first line or two, if you like."

She picked up the paper and disappeared into a door. "Don't even try it."

The Doctor snorted again and returned to his post by the console. "Why do you have to write all the time anyway? Why do you have to _make_ _up_ int'resting stuff? You're sitting in a time machine with an alien! I mean, come on!"

A few minutes later Xan reemerged. "Well, that was quick," said the Doctor.

"It's a haiku," the girl explained.

"All that time to write a _haiku?_"

"Yes."She slowly crumpled it in her fist and opened the TARDIS door again. The poem sailed out into the colorful tunnel, leaving the blue phone box behind as it journeyed through the dimensions.

"Was that one about me, too?"

"You'll never know. This is Zen I'm doing, okay? I create, and then I destroy what I create, so everything I make is new and unique."

"Ah. So it's like when rock bands smash up all their instruments after a show?"

"Yes, except..."

"You're not loud, ugly, and surrounded by a lot of screaming, legless groupies?"

"Exactly."

"D'you fancy a trip to a concert, then?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"'Cos there'll be monsters. And music," he admitted. "But mostly monsters."

"And peril?"

"Sure."

"Danger?"

"Absolutely."

"Yeah," said Xan, nodding. "Okay." The Doctor smiled and reached for a large dial in the mess of controls, then had to stretch all the way across the console to drag a lever upright. By degrees, the immense blue column rising out of the console shifted, some inner piston rising and falling.

"So, I was thinking of somewhere in the nineteen-sixties, you know, maybe one of the really good..."

A deafening _crack!_ There was a flash, a crunch, and the lights of the TARDIS dimmed as whole structure rocked with an impact.


	2. Galag of Taglos

Xan tripped against the seat behind her, her bones jarring with the sudden halt. The Doctor fell forward against the console, then leapt up again, whirling around to the computer screen before Xan had caught her breath. He stared at it, eyes getting wider and wider.

Xan then exploded into action, vaulting over the railing with surprising agility and scrambling for the exit. "Wait! Wait! What are you doing?" called the Doctor, lifting his eyes from the monitor, which he was gripping between his hands so tightly his knuckles were white.

"This isn't power failure! You felt that, right? This is intentional! Something _stopped_ us! It can't have been a shutdown, we were going fast and it takes _energy_..."

"... to break that kind of momentum," finished the man as light dawned. "Of course! Of _course!_ _Brilliant!_" The Doctor sped around the console and caught himself on the frame as Xan pulled open both doors. They stared through the starry void, agape, at the colossal object that was filling their view, and the red shaft of light that enveloped them.

"Whoa," said Xan softly. "That's... new..."

Recognition appeared in the Doctor's eyes. "No, no, _no_, not you! Not _you!_" he shouted at the menacing vessel that had trapped them. "Oh, _blast_ you people!" He ran back to the console.

Xan hovered at the door, eyes popping. She _knew_ that aliens existed; technically, she was one, or had been, once. She'd been inside the Doctor's TARDIS plenty of times by now, and she'd seen a few very dangerous monsters. But this was the first spaceship. She hadn't really expected how astonishing it would be, to see the sky filled by a construct from another world, another people. The difference between meeting a man from New Delhi and actually going to India. Reading a language, and sitting in a room full of native speakers. A city-dweller going to a place where trees outnumber people by a factor of millions. Suddenly you are very much an outsider. An... alien.

"_So we have found you, DOK-tor, in our grasp once again._" The harsh voice issued from behind her, and when Xan tore her eyes away from the starship bristling with weapons and crossed over to the console, she realized the Doctor was staring into a tiny screen. Xan approached the Doctor, about to speak, but, without looking at her or changing his expression at all, he stretched out a hand and hurriedly signaled her to stop, quickly spelling out _h-i-d-e_ in ASL, which Xan, to her relief, knew how to read from working with a deaf colleague on an archeological dig. She nodded and hastily retreated behind one of the tall columns of coral.

"Ah. Empeglor Galag. I can't say I'm pleased to see _you_. I was just... headed to a music concert. Needed a holiday, you know."

"_Once more you trespass in our territory, DOK-tor. Do not think I have forgotten last time._"

Xan half-emerged and mouthed, _Last time what?_ The Doctor barely glanced at her before returning his eyes to the screen. "Oh, come on, Galag, I was traveling through your space for, what, five nanoseconds? And what do you mean, last time?"

"_The time you tried to depose me, DOK-tor, and set up a... _republic_ of the... _people_,_" spat the unseen Galag. "_Your anarchist ways are..._"

"Hang on. Stop there. _Anarchist?_" laughed the Doctor. "Seriously? I try to set up a _democracy_, and you call that _anarchy?_ You've got to get out more, honestly, you do."

"_You are under arrest by order of the Taglosian Supremacy Edict of 5719 in violation of section fifty-two, paragraphs two, five, seven, four, six, eight, three, and... ah, here we are... and one, too, it seems._" continued the antagonist gleefully.

"There _is_ no section fifty-two! It's only got fifty-one sections!"

"_Section fifty-two: concerning the existence of the threat to the state known as the Doctor,_" clarified the Empeglor. "_Surrender your TARDIS and do not resist arrest..._"

"I've got my very own _section_," the Doctor said, as if it was his early birthday. "Oooh, I'm _flattered_." He winked at Xan, who was peeping out from behind the coral.

"_... and you may be given clemency. Prepare to be boarded._"

"Really? Just like that? Oh, I'm _terrified _now," responded the Doctor sarcastically.

"_And,_" added the Empeglor, as the Doctor reached for a switch, "_give the same warning to any companions you may have, if you want them to live._"

The Doctor's eyes turned to glass marbles. "I don't have any," he said abruptly. "I travel alone now." With that, he slammed the lever down and there was a fading whistle that seemed to indicate that communications were cut. The Doctor let out a breath and leaned against the console, mouth twisted into a thin angry line. Then he saw Xan, looking very small and worried behind the coral. He made an attempt at a reassuring smile as he walked over to the girl.

"Not nice people, then?" she asked. Her apprehension was obvious from the way her striking green eyes went very wide, and her mouth shrank, and her whole face turned tapering at the chin, like a small child. The Doctor sighed and beckoned to her.

"Oh, it's nothing to worry about..."

"Not scared," she said quickly and, to be honest, quite worriedly.

"...Taglosians aren't all as bad as their Empeglor; really, most of them are quite nice. Just... the soldiers aren't. Galag isn't. You know."

"I can take down the soldiers who board us if you like," offered Xan, putting her fighting face on. At seeing the Doctor's expression, though, she mumbled, "Only joking. What _is _an Empeglor anyway?"

"Basically it's just an Emperor. But with, well, a big old 'gl' in."

"That's about what I thought-"

With a jerk, the TARDIS began to move again, being pulled towards its captors.

"What... what happens now?" Xan stammered. "Why do they have a problem with you?" She had risen slightly to her toes, and was bouncing slightly as if ready to run, a sure sign of her fear. She was fueling her adrenaline to kill the panic.

"Oh, I'm too unpredictable for their liking. Most places have got laws against me, as a matter of fact. I got banished from England by Queen Victoria," he said proudly.

"So this happens all the time?"

"Every once in a while, yeah."

"But... but what about me? They've never seen me before."

"And they're not going to." He hopped back to the controls, and readjusted a set of levers. "What have you got now, Galag?" he called cheerfully. "What kind of net have you thrown into the water for me...? Ah! Simple! Hardly anything to it!" The Doctor confidently clicked a pair of knobs into place and tweaked a tiny valve wheel. "Just have to... readjust the phase oscillations... of the dimension engine! There we go! Jailbreak!" He triumphantly pulled the main power switch back.

With a _whruuummm_ the power surged and the TARDIS started to shake. Xan braced herself against the rail. Laughing, the Doctor flipped a whole row of switches and then flung himself across the surface to press a tiny green button.

But a puff of sparks spat out of a clump of wires, and the great piston in the column came slamming down. The Doctor flew backwards and hit the rail, struggling to his feet again and diving for the console. "That's not fair!" he shouted.

"_And since when do I play fair, DOK-tor? This will be most amusing, I'm sure. It took much research to find the correct frequency, but it will be truly worth it._"

"This is wrong! You're supposed to be trying to _capture_ me!" the Doctor yelled indignantly. "You're _cheating!_ Stop messing with my TARDIS!" He reached for the lever to end the comlink, but it was jammed.

"_How rude of you. I want to see this, DOK-tor. I want to see you... inconvenienced. I want to see you helpless._" "The only inconvenience is being stuck looking at your face, believe me." Pulling out the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor assaulted the flight controls. Xan hung onto the metal bar, utterly at the mercy of fate. To her dismay, and the Doctor's, the controls all seemed to be stuck fast, and impervious to the screwdriver's attacks.

"What about my _proceedings?_" wailed the Doctor, when he realized that his TARDIS had been completely jammed. "What about the part where you read the Edict to me and..."

"_... and you find a loophole and the Consulate is forced to let you go? I thought I might skip that part._"

The Doctor's mouth hung open. Slowly he ran a hand through his hair. "Oh, you're not as stupid as I thought you were, Galag," he said, suddenly grinning devilishly. Then he shouted, "That makes it more fun!" and sprinted around the console to where the immovable crate was rooted. Seconds later he emerged with a rough metal sphere. A ring of yellow light appeared on the sphere as he clenched it in his fist, and Xan realized in a flash what the object was, even before the Doctor wrenched open the door and hurled it into space. He pulled the door shut just in time.

As a silent explosion bloomed in the void, the TARDIS's gravity skewed completely, throwing Xan back against the inside of the ship. She wrapped her fingers around one of the brown hexagons which slightly protruded from the organic yellow wall, somehow managing to hold on to the tiny ridge when the world pitched sideways again.

"Doctor, I know this whole mad scientist alien persona is fun for you, but could you try being a little _less_ insane right now?" Xan yelled, diving for a new handhold.

"Sorry!" shouted the Doctor. "Couldn't quite catch that!" With this, he directed the sonic screwdriver at the array of controls and the ship responded with another tremor.

"_Who is this you are addressing?_" asked Galag with apparent glee. "_Ah, so you lied, after all! Would you care to introduce me to this friend of yours?_"

For some reason this knocked Xan right over a mental precipice she had been balancing on for some time. "He's a little busy!" she screamed. "If you haven't already guessed!" Then she found herself yelling, "Tell me, what do you use for genetic material?"

"My sweet little hypocrite... Xan, this isn't time for _xenobiology!_"

"_What are you...?_"

Giddy, Xan fought her way to the console. "_I said_," she yelled, "_What does your species have for genetic material? _Is it DNA or something different?" She was amazed by her own audacity, and by the fact that her mouth kept talking for her. "Because I've got DNA, and so does the Doctor and the Siren Hounds did, too, and I was wondering if that was universal with life or if it's possible to have another..." The next tremor shook the sentence to a premature halt.

"_You want to know what I'm made of?_" asked Galag incredulously.

"_Yes!_" Xan bellowed. "If you've got the time!"

"_I'm trying to destroy you and you want me to tell you if I have... what was it... Deennay?_"

"So you don't!"

"_Is that some kind of trick? What is this deennay?_"

"You don't have a sugar-phosphate double helix structure connected to complementary nitrogenous bases? Encodes the information for all proteins in three-letter codons that are translated into amino acids? _The defining feature of Earth-like life?_"

"_I don't understand..._"

"_YES!_" cried Xan, ecstatic. "_YES!_"

"Xan, could you maybe get a little _perspective_ here?"

"But isn't that so incredible, Doctor? Well, not to you, obviously, but... I mean, think of all the things I've got to _learn!_ A whole new genomic structure..."

"Yes, one belonging to a creature trying to kill us!"

"Oh, but you'll figure out a way to stop him," Xan assured him merrily. "You're so clever! Now, you, Galag, tell me more about your genetic material? What does it use for coding?"

The Doctor knew he was turning pink. "Right, so... I mean... sure, but... well... okay, I _will_, then!" He reached for the controls. "And by the way, Galag, don't you think I'd have met people trying to kill me who are a _little_ more dangerous than you?"

A long pause. "_Ah. Well._ _Let us see._"

The explosion that followed lit up the console like a firework, and through the smoke, Xan saw the Doctor hit the floor, clutching his face.


	3. Stuck in High Reverse

"_Are you all right?_" Xan screamed. "_Doctor!_" In seconds she reached him, and he rolled towards her, carefully taking his hands from over his eyes, and Xan saw he was unhurt.

"Got down just in time," he coughed. "So much for stopping Galag. God, Xan, I'm sorry. No concert, huh?" He actually appeared very contrite.

"Smoke. Sparks. Loud, dissonant noise. This gets pretty close, don't you think?" As Xan helped him up she asked, "What did Galag do? What's _happening_ now?"

The Doctor stumbled through the smoke over to the monitor. "He's jammed all the circuits... somehow... and we're stuck in reverse!"

"Stuck in... stuck in _what?_" Xan felt the falling sensation in her gut, the barely present sixth sense that was one of the few remnants from her inhuman past. "_Reverse?_ How...?"

"The dimension engine!" the Doctor burst out. "How could I have _missed_ that? He must have hacked it when I switched the frequencies! Of course, he couldn't do much, because TARDIS technology is _way_ out of his league, but it'll take me some time to get this stopped!"

"You couldn't just... _ask_ it to slow down?"

"What, the TARDIS? I... well... she doesn't really connect so well in a tetradimensional frame."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning no, I can't!" He rushed to the door that led outside and yanked it open. The warped, fiery tunnel was racing past at an alarming speed.

"Why do we have to keep opening that door?" Xan protested. "Is this the fourth time already? The fifth? Why don't you have a _window?_"

As he slammed the doors shut once more and fell against them, breathing hard, the Doctor considered this idea. His fingers speculatively formed a frame, thumbs to forefingers. He shook his head. "Nah. Had one once but now... it's not really _me._"

"How fast are we falling?" Xan felt words flying out of her lips without any decisions made from her mind, shaking as if with cold.

"I don't know! If I can cut the power... but then we'll fly apart from the inertia! We have to slow down first..."

Inexorably, Xan's eyes were drawn to a tiny little screen by the monitor. It didn't show much, simply a small, shifting, immensely intricate circle-based symbol. Groups of smaller subunits were changing at different speeds. One in particular fluctuated so quickly that the movement was completely invisible, except for little fuzzy areas around the edges. But Xan watched the others, moving her eyes around the symbol counterclockwise. The next, also buzzing along. The next, flickering. Then, she saw distinct shapes, and then some of them could even be discerned. The whole of it had the shape and sense of a mechanical watch. On steroids. And methamphetamine. Both of those, at the same time. Maybe caffeine, too.

A clock, yes. But this one didn't _count_ time. It _told_ it, like a GPS rather than an odometer.

Xan was only beginning to learn the Gallifreyan language (or re-learn, as the case may be), but had grasped the number system quickly. She noticed two symbols in particular that repeated out of a sequence. _Oun, soun_, and then the number next to it changed. One, zero,and a place shift. Counting down.

"How much time do we have?" the girl called desperately. She tried to read the number, but it was changing so fast not even the slowest digits stayed constant for long. And as for magnitude, she could only guess, because it used base thirteen.

The Doctor glanced at the horometer as he wrestled with the controls. "_Not good!_" he yelled. "Very not good!" Even he was beginning to panic. "Hang on to something! If I can't stop the TARDIS soon..."

Xan frantically tried to imagine what would happen after 'soon' became 'too late.' They were picking up speed. One by one, the sub-symbols winked out of existence, and the whole number became steadily less complex. They were down to fifteen or so characters now.

"_Where_ do we_ stop?_" Xan cried."_When?_ If we just keep falling backwards in time, we can't keep going forever, can we?"

"That's why I'm _worried!_" the Doctor returned. "And believe me, that isn't very common!" But he had a mad grin on his face. "Who _knows_ where we'll end up?"

Fourteen... it was the worst kind of countdown, because every time the symbol's complexity shrank, the next mark vanished thirteen times faster.

"You better do something _fast!_" Xan shouted. "As in _now!_"

Desperately leaning over the controls, hands darting over the jumble of devices, the Doctor answered, "I can try to slow us down, but it's dangerous!"

"As in we might become a super black hole when we collapse in on ourselves because as our momentum is converted into deceleration our mass becomes suddenly near-infinite?"

"You're getting good at this," the Doctor said, mildly impressed. "How did you know?"

"Traveling with you, it seems to me that once you figure out what's going on, just take what you know and imagine the worst possible extension of it, and _that's_ probably what's going to end up happening!"

"How very pessimistic of you."

"On the contrary, the fun is when it turns out not to be as bad as you thought! And you aren't too surprised, either, when it ends up being worse! Which it always is!"

Briefly unnerved, the Doctor turned to stare at Xan. Something about what she'd said sounded very familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. Then he composed himself and asked musingly, "Why is that everyone I know always ends up saying something along those lines?"

"Oh, I don't know; it's probably just a _funny little coincidence_, don't you think?" She saw just... ten symbols now. "_Do_ something!" she screamed. "A bootleg turn! A Crazy Ivan! I don't know! Anything!"

"I'm _trying!_"

The temperature was rising; Xan could feel it burning in her limbs, like a fever on a summer night.

"If I can push us into a semi-permanent temporal loop, we can burn off speed, but there isn't much free space to fold!"

"Not enough _free space?_ Space is _space!_ There's a reason why _space_ means _emptiness! _Means _room!_ How can there be not _enough_ of it?"

"When we are right now, the universe has the radius of a couple of light-years, so _not much free space, no!_"

Ten figures blinking on the horometer. It was moving a little slower, but not by any significant amount.

"What'll _happen?_"

"I don't _know!_ Hold on tight!"

Nine.

"What's happening to the _walls?_"

"The internal dimensions are shrinking! There isn't room in the universe for the amount of space the TARDIS takes up!"

A grinding, screeching rasp reverberated in the frame of the room. "Oh, _no!_" the Doctor yelled, aghast. "I think those were the squash courts!"

"There are _squash courts_ in the TARDIS?"

"No, just _squashed_ ones now! Subtle difference!"

"We're down to eight symbols! My god, my god..."

"I thought you didn't have a god!"

"Well, we'd better start looking for one!"

Seven...

Xan was muttering something under her breath, over and over, like a mantra or a prayer. After a moment, the Doctor could make out her words. He abandoned the controls and ran to his friend's side, holding her tight as she rocked back and forth, hands clenched, eyes shut tight, breaths coming sharply and sporadically as she whispered, "_I'm not afraid to die. I'm not afraid to die. I'm not afraid to..._"

Six...

The Doctor pulled something out of his pocket. "I never thought I'd _ever_ use these," he told Xan as he slipped the leather band around her waist and across her chest. "Horrible, nasty things. But, oh well. Get up, Xan. Get up. No time left."

Xan looked down at herself, and she paused in her litany. "What's this?" she asked suspiciously. The Doctor pushed her against a wall and did something with the straps, and suddenly she was fixed in place.

Five...

The Doctor wrapped the bands around himself and stood against the wall, fiddling with a buckle. "I suppose River was right, after all."

"What _are_ these things?"

Four...

He looked at her and grinned. The buckle snapped into place.

Three... two...

"Seatbelts," said the Doctor.

The last symbol spluttered through its cycle and winked out. Then, before Xan had time to scream, or think, the world imploded.


	4. Past Perfect

_Cogito, ergo sum_. That was the first thought that came to her. She clung to the idea like a scared lamprey. _I'm thinking, so I'm alive. I'm not dead. Everything's dark, and I can't feel my body, and I can't hear anything, but I'm not dead._ _Yet_. Her mind floated in the ether, touching nothing.

The Doctor heaved a huge breath as his synapses coalesced. His cells were taking their time in reorganizing, and the free-floating energy that had, until recently, been attached to his nervous system had a small bit of difficulty reconnecting. But sound and touch and sight and taste hurried back into place and the Doctor's muscles began to respond to his will. Fumbling, he unclipped himself from the harness, and tripped onto the floor. It hardly hurt, because he was so numb, but now every limb was prickling with pins and needles. Out of instinct, he reached up and ran his hands over the contours of his face.

Because he had the most powerfully pressing feeling that he had just regenerated. The rush of light and dark, the brief moment of suspended blankness, during which the body and mind reassembled. Then, waking, and feeling the energy snap into place, feeding back into the newly constructed nerve pathways. Regeneration was something that you couldn't really become accustomed to.

His face was all there, in its usual form, which meant that it _hadn't_ happened. An understandable moment of _déjà vu_ was just creeping up on him when he remembered Xan. When he looked up, he saw her hanging limply in the makeshift seatbelt. Her body hadn't quite caught up with what had been done to it.

Shaking off the needles in his arms, and squeezing his toes open and shut inside his shoes, the Doctor extricated Xan from the straps.

A sense of falling. Gravity lurched in Xan's gut. She still couldn't feel anything, but guessed that she still had a body, because she could tell it was being moved somewhere. Her brain seemed to be functioning, though. Xan recalled, in a series of bursts, the implosion, and then the countdown, and then the Empeglor.

Her motor functions inched along decadently, but her skin started tingling slightly. And then, echoes. She found that her ears were working, too.

There wasn't much to hear, just the sound of footsteps and the rustle of clothes shifting as someone moved. She felt pressure on her back and legs and shoulder, two smooth, perpendicular surfaces. A hand touched her arm, and then moved down, pressing lightly on the underside of her wrist. The touch vanished briefly. Then, with a professional adeptness, it reappeared under her chin, lifting up her head, and Xan felt a cold pressure against her temple, and heard, echoing in her skull, the whine of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.

_When in doubt, sonic,_ she thought, irritated. _Have a little restraint, Doctor!_ She tried to open her eyes, but the blackness persisted.

The figure examining her moved very suddenly. "Xan? You're awake?"

_Yes, but how did you know?_ she thought. _I can't move a muscle!_

"Can you hear me? Xan?" The Doctor sounded very skeptical. He tipped her head to one side.

_I must have done something_. Xan racked her brain. _Opened my eyes? But I can't see... then again, that doesn't mean my eyelids don't move..._

"You're... blinking... okay, that's something, at least..."

_Yeah, it is._

"Blinking a lot... probably just some kind of spastic reflex... oh. Now you aren't..."

_If only I knew Morse Code! Why haven't I learned Morse Code? Think of how useful it could be!_

"Hang on... That was... one, two, three... once... three again... no, four... once... Three-one-four-one... five... what does that mean? Three-one-four-one-five-seventeen? Twenty-four? Thirty? Why are you blinking like that...? Oh! Oh, _pi!_ Three point one four... Right. Right! You _are_ awake! Not random reflexes. Okay. You just can't... ah. Optic nerve hasn't connected yet, has it? Motor functions down too... Sorry 'bout that. See, what I think happened was, our entire bodies were crushed into a point of infinite density, but so did the rest of space, and our neural energy was briefly suspended in the ether whilst space was reformed on the other side of the singularity, including our bodies. So the neurons just need to get moving again. Could take a minute."

Xan squeezed her eyes shut once, very vehemently.

"Now, I don't read whatever Morsey sort of code you're speaking in, but that looked a tad rude to me."

She blinked fiercely. The tendons around her eyes were beginning to loosen.

"You watch your... eyelids, young lady!" admonished the Doctor. "Or I'll wash them out with... contact lens fluid... oh, forget it..."

Beginning with a soft fuzz, Xan's vision returned. Her throat also kicked into gear. "I w's a'ake 'ha whole time," she slurred. "Don' sonic my b'ain."

"I was only scanning you."

"Pu' da'h soopid hing hway. Ry now."

The Doctor looked a little hurt. "My sonic screwdriver isn't stupid," he said, holding it away from her protectively.

Xan stared about her. The main lights of the TARDIS were out, and the only solid shadows cast came from the glow of the roiling organic material encased in the console.

After a few seconds Xan rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. "I'm sorry," she said. "Your sonic screwdriver is very smart." She patted the Doctor's shoulder. "Get me up," she commanded. "I want to stand." After a delay she added, "... please."

With a snort, the Doctor hauled her to her feet. Xan felt her inner ear adjust, and managed to stay upright with only minimal support. However, her stomach was queasy, and rebelled against her verticality.

"Do you need to sit down?"

"No, I don't need to sit..." Her face paled as the blood ran from her head. "I need to sit down," she corrected hastily, and then collapsed onto the floor.

"Hm," the Doctor said, folding his arms across his chest. "That's not so good."

"No, but nothing really is right now, is it?" Xan pointed out, flat on her back. "Oh, don't worry about me," she said cheerfully, as the Doctor bent down to lift her up. "This is actually quite comfortable."

"Are you... okay...?"

"I like lying on flat surfaces," she said mattter-of-factly. "I'm not sure why, but I do. And, you know, the floor's warm, too."

The Doctor scrutinized her, and then shrugged. "Oh, dear. I don't want to have to tell you this, but... your brain's fried, Xan."

"And working quite well, notwithstanding," she chirped, vaguely aware that she was out of her mind. "Umm... certainly Not With Standing. _With_ standing, not so much." She watched the Doctor from her strange vantage point. "So where are we?"

He was pacing around the console, deep in thought. "I don't know," he said finally, sounding surprised by this. "But we seem to be alive, and in one piece... that is, in _two_ pieces... two distinct but _individually_ whole... living pieces... Well, three, including the TARDIS..."

"Try not to step on me," Xan calmly interjected. She was feeling very lightheaded.

The Doctor paused and focused on the girl. "You're _not_ helping," he finally told her, and he hefted her up by her shoulders to drag her onto the couch. "I can't think properly having to step over you every time I come round. But you're being very docile right now, and that's excellent. Do try to stay that way."

Immediately Xan jumped to her feet. "Maybe I could go see if any other parts of the TARDIS were destroyed," she said, a spark of mad adventure appearing in her eyes. With a nimbleness that few other people who have recently been reassembled atom by atom possess, she scurried for the door.

"Right. Okay. Go ahead and do that, and I'll..." Then the Doctor realized this meant letting her wander all around the TARDIS, and bolted over to her, catching Xan before she could leave. "No, no, no," he said quickly, ushering her back to the couch. "_Don't_ do that. Just sit down and... and... and stay sitting, there's a good... er... human."

Xan had a very knowing look in her eyes. "Where are we?" she prompted the Doctor slowly. She folded her hands under her thighs and waited patiently, her expression turning very serious.

"I think we... er..."

Xan's left eyebrow popped up, encouraging the Doctor to continue.

"Xan," said the Doctor, taking her by the shoulders.

"Yes, Doctor?"

"You're insane."

"I know." She smiled. "Did you know that persons struck by lightning sometimes develop entirely new personalities, tastes, and skills?"

The Doctor tried once more. "You do _realize_ where we are, don't you?"

"We're drifting..." she whispered. "We were stuck in temporal reverse... the universe shrank and I think I felt it implode. Yes, I think I do know."

"And you do realize I have _absolutely no idea_ how we are going to get out."

"And you do realize that we are sitting in the middle of the greatest mystery in the universe, in the realm of the hypothetical model, in an astrophysicist's wildest fantasy?"

"Before the Big Bang..." murmured the Doctor, eyes growing dreamy.

"Before time existed," Xan added. "Before anything. Before the creation of the universe. The _prologue_ of _reality_. _Before_ the _beginning._"

"Yeah," the Doctor said slowly. He nodded and grinned hugely. "Yes, we _are!_ This is... this is _incredible!_ Oh, this is _brilliant!_"

Xan whirled to her feet. "Well, come on! What are we _waiting_ for?" She and the Doctor mutually dragged each other to the doors of the TARDIS, and took up opposite stations.

The Doctor caught her free hand. "I'm a really bad influence on you, aren't I?"

"Oh, come on! I was always like this."

"You're so young and impressionable..."

"I think I can safely say that I'm the least impressionable person that ever _existed_, Doctor."

"Well..."

"You _know_ it's true..."

"Well, yes, but you've only been a human for what, twelve years? You're practically a child! Twelve years old!"

"Not even," the woman said smugly. "I was dormant in the Chameleon Arch for the first nine years, remember? I'm only _three_."

He gestured at the doors. "You sure this is a good idea?" the Doctor asked, reason bobbing briefly to the surface of his thoughts.

"No," the young woman said, eyes wide. She laughed, and her eyebrows hopped up her forehead even more. "No, I'm not... _Let's do it anyway_."

"Yes, let's," agreed the Doctor.

"On three!"

"On _pi!_" the Doctor declared.

"On pi! Why not!"

"Pi!"

"_Two_... point-one-four-one-five-nine!"

"_One_... point-one-four-one-five-nine!"

"_PointonefouronefivenineGO!_"

And together they wrenched the doors open.


	5. Beyond the Door

**AN: This new chapter is dedicated to everyone who has reviewed. Thank you for inspiring me to continue writing! I hope you enjoy the story.**

Xan had expected it to be either a vast expanse of emptiness or a crushing wall. But, really, how could anyone have any expectations about this?

Impossibly, they hadn't died. They'd been pulled through what amounted to a singularity, and had survived it. And then they'd opened the door, and they still hadn't died. Xan knew it would hurt her image to seem relived when they hadn't been sucked out into space, or worse. But she also thought she could hear the faint huff of air from next to her, and had a feeling that the Doctor, too, had been holding his breath. But perhaps it was because of the sheer insanity of what lay beyond.

"This is impossible..." the Doctor whispered after he took in another breath. "Except it isn't, because here we are. Incredible, isn't it? So, what do you think? Jackpot?"

"Look..." Xan pointed. "Just. Look."

Tunnels of color and scalloped edges. Spires of blossoming crystals. Arches and curlicues and intricate floating bulbs. It was all dark and yet everything could be seen perfectly. It was all sharp and clear and yet there were no solid edges anywhere. The closer Xan looked at the shapes around her, the more she saw. Tiny caverns inside the walls of the tunnel, and within those caverns miniscule replicas of the arches and spires and bulbs. And within those...

It looked so perfect and precise, so much the opposite of what nature brings. In the areas between the protrusions, there was blackness, but more shapes could be seen. If you were looking for a single straight line, or just one enclosed, simple shape you could follow with your eye, then you'd fail. Xan kept staring and staring until she thought she'd had her fill, but couldn't tear her eyes away.

And yet it was familiar. Somehow, the shapes and turns and curves were all so recognizable. What was it?

Xan had a strange thought. "Hold on," she said, blinking. "Something's not quite... I'm not really seeing this, am I?" She stuck her hand in her pocket, and rooted around.

"Er. Are you smelling it?"

"Maybe I am," she murmured absently, and pulled her smartphone out. "You can't see things without light, can you? Well, this can't, anyway. Let's see what the video app thinks it sees."

"That's pretty clever," acknowledged the Doctor, peeping over her shoulder. "Without _actually_ having to be intelligent."

"Yes, a scan with almost guaranteed but meaningless results that can be freely and liberally interpreted."

"Couldn't count how many times _I've_ done one of those," the Doctor sighed nostalgically.

"You and Sherlock Holmes. All right. Testing..." They both watched the screen as Xan turned the phone around, which at first reflected the interior of the TARDIS. But then she pointed it outside, and the image was... it was blank, looking like the first roll of unedited film, where the CGI bits haven't been added over the green screen yet. It was as if there was a blind spot in the phone's camera that perfectly encompassed the frame of the door.

"So are we imagining it, then?" Xan said apprehensively.

The Doctor considered the options. "Well," he said brightly, "providing it _is _an illusion, and what we _seem_ to be seeing is not actually there, there still has to be something out _there_ projecting the illusion into _here_," (he pointed to his head) "so there really _is_ something, after all."

"_Unless_ it's reflecting what's inside the TARDIS and distorting it somehow..."

"Which _means_ there's some kind of energy field..."

"Or curvature of space-time..."

"Which means that space and time..."

"Still exist within this plane of existence!" Xan concluded, thrilled.

She and the Doctor exchanged a double overhand high five. Then the Doctor leaned back against the frame and steepled his fingers over his chin. "Unless..." he began.

"Yeah?"

"Unless we've got absolutely no idea of what we're talking about?" he suggested. "Maybe? Possibly?"

At that moment (if moments existed), the lights of the TARDIS dimmed, with a fading wail.

"Oh, no-"

"Thought so..." Xan sang softly.

The Doctor pulled her back inside. "Oh, this is bad, this is very bad..." He flung himself down in front of the console and inspected what could have been a dial on the underside of the surface. "Whatever's out there isn't enough to power her! The TARDIS runs on-" "Huon energy," they chorused.

"Right, you know about that-"

"It was pretty much the first thing I learned," Xan reminded him. Following the trail of mysterious radiation had been what led her to the Doctor and his crashed TARDIS the Christmas she'd met him. It had been what kept bringing them together, despite their efforts. In a way, huon energy was also the reason why Xan was still human.

"So in the universe, because of the way space-time's all mashed together and tangled up, there's always a certain amount of ambient huon energy for the TARDIS to draw on, but here, wherever we are, that's missing!"

"Don't really like the sound of that..."

"No, it's _not_ good, because the pressure and the gravity and the atmosphere and all those nice _life_-_supporting_ functions can't work without power, can they?"

"Uh... going to say no..."

"Well, we probably have about half an hour before it gets critical. You know where the storage section is, don't you?" he asked urgently.

"Yes... no... maybe..." She was embarrassed to find that she couldn't remember. If he'd ever told her, come to think of it. He probably just assumed that she wandered all around the TARDIS in her spare time, and had memorized the whole layout by now. And this was partly true, but she had enough sense not to go too far from the familiar.

"Don't worry about it. Just listen closely. The suns don't rise every five days on Wolf 359!"

Xan was about to open her mouth to declare his insanity when something about the sentence's chanting tempo made her pause. _The_-_SUNS-don't-RISE-every-FIVE-days-ON-Wolf-3-5-9..._

"A mnemonic!" she declared, then added, "Sorry. Continue."

"Exactly, it's a mneumonic, the first two letters of each word are the directions; at the _third_ stretch of _hallway_ after you exit, go _straight_, then _up_, then _down_ the stairs and _over_ the bridge, _right_, _into_ the _elevator_ _vortex_,_ five_ levels _down_, at the _antepenultimate_ lock _open_ the door with the _wheel_ and enter in this exact _order_ the code 3-5-9, all right?"

She repeated carefully, "The suns don't rise every five days on Wolf 359. The suns don't... okay. Third hall, straight, up, down, over... right... down, elevator vortex, five down, antepenultimate, open wheel with code 359. Got it. No, wait. Hold on. 3-5-9 or three hundred and fifty-nine?"

"Is there a difference?"

"Decimal system or triskaidecimal?"

"It's 3-5-9 in Gallifreyan numerals which is seven thousand five hundred and fifty-three in base ten but don't _think_ about it so much, get going!"

"But what am I looking for?"

The Doctor gestured with his hands the approximate size and shape of an object, or possibly was trying to perform a sleight-of-hand. "It'll be this thick black box, with a lot of circuits and a giant lock. There's a symbol on it, sort of like a infinity sign and a yin-yang put together, and around that will read, '_ahn_ _dalach caal __twr freyren_...'"

"Which means...?"

"Never _mind_ what it means!"

"_Freyren_... genitive of possession... _twr_ is diamond..."

"Don't think about it! Just go get it!"

"_Caalon_ is to guard... _dalach_ means... _death_?"

"Seriously... don't... think about it. I _mean_ that."

"Hold on one second..." Xan said incredulously. "The words on the box say... 'Death herself guards the diamond of Gallifrey'? What kind of...?"

Before Xan could finish, the Doctor pushed her towards the console room's exit. "No time to lose!" he said loudly. "Hop to it!"

Which left Xan little choice but to follow his instructions. As she jogged out of the room, she asked over her shoulder, "_Do_ the suns really not rise every five...?"

The Doctor laughed. "Probably not," he admitted. "Except to us, that is."

With a quick mental flex, Xan locked the phrase in her mind and then disappeared down the hallway.

*****To any linguistic nerds out there, yes I _did_ just debut my audacious project: create a language of Gallifrey! The sounds of it are a mix of Welsh, Gaelic, Latin, and maybe a little Sumerian. 'R's are rolled, 'ch' is like the Scottish 'loch', 'w's are vowels that sound like 'o's or 'u's. and I decided to use what I've dubbed a 'poetic order' for the sentence structure. Basically there are a few rules about what goes where in a sentence, but the main decider in word order is the rhythm of the sentence, or what sounds best. There's also a plethora of verb tenses (like, twenty), which makes sense since these are _Time_ Lords we're talking about. The phrase (which Xan was right in thinking means 'Death herself guards the diamond of Gallifrey'!) would be pronounced: ON DAL-akh KAL TOWR FREH-hren.*****


	6. Following Directions

**AN: And so the adventure continues! This chapter isn't just TARDIS eyecandy (or would that be mindcandy), by the way. I'm juggling a few story arcs here, so pay close attention to what happens.**

As soon as the door shut behind her, Xan felt a sudden rush of cold air that peaked and then faded. She pulled the sleeves of her shirt down over her fists and hunched her shoulders. The slightly curving walls, studded with the familiar hexagonal motif, created a corridor that was illuminated by seemingly ambient light that hinted at being underwater. Third hallway after the exit... The first strip of passageway ended in a round open space in the center of which stood a somewhat lumpy coral staircase. Xan had been this far plenty of times. A door on the left led to the bathrooms and the shower and what could be designated as a kitchen. Up the stairs was the massive wardrobe room and the dormitory where she slept, limbs splayed out across whichever two of the six bunks took her fancy, or curled up in one of the foam-padded pods. The knob at the foot of the banister on the stairs was far shinier and smoother than the rest, from all the times hands had slid over it.

That was familiar, but the hall that continued on at the opposite side of the room was not. Quickly, Xan ran through the directions before trotting into the archway.

Unfamiliar, yes, but in layout, not appearance. That was what perturbed her the most. This hallway, and then the next, were identical to the first. _Typical Time Lords_, Xan thought. _Typical advanced civilization architecture, actually, if old movies are anything to go by, but I didn't think they were. I guess people really do think that once you've got space travel and laser guns everything ought to look alike._ She started to move faster. There wasn't any time to waste, but she noticed that the walls were irregularly ridged. More writing? A map, even?

The air was chillier than ever when she reached the third junction, and she felt her cheeks prickle out of fear as she registered the darkness. The glow in the rooms stopped here, but through the gloom she saw that one slice of the wall was textured differently than the rest. Or was that it? As Xan approached, she raised her arms slightly, shifted the way she distributed her weight. She fell into a defensive posture automatically, out of habit. Then she slowly reached out to touch the wall.

In hindsight it wasn't the brightest of ideas, though she felt that a large percentage of discovery was taking risks. As soon as her skin landed against the surface, there was a sizzle, and Xan jerked back, hissing in shock. Her fingertips felt dead, and her hand began to throb. The rough patch on the wall had been cold, so cold that touching it felt like picking up dry ice.

She let her hand recover, and then, more carefully, hovered her palm right over the spot. "Shouldn't it feel cold?" she muttered to herself. The air directly around it was no different from anywhere else. "A temperature gradient can't be restricted to a single object," Xan added firmly, having found that talking aloud seemed to draw out the best ideas. "It isn't in this case, anyway. If the particles in my hand are affected, why not the particles in the air...?" A part of her brain was hopping up and down like a maddened alarm clock, trying urgently to tell her that _this was not the time_. She drew away, but not before letting her hand rest against the wall next to the raw patch, and felt a shiver.

"You're _hurt_," she said softly. _Raw_ had been the right word to use all along, she realized, and remembered how _she'd_ pulled away after sensing pain. This couldn't have been so different. Uncomfortable, Xan took several more steps back, mumbling an apology under her breath. There was something very ancient and primal about the TARDIS that set her ill at ease.

_The suns don't rise every five days on Wolf 359_, Xan repeated in her mind, trying to get herself back on course. _Straight, then up a flight of stairs._ The junction did seem to branch off into several halls, and she located the one just opposite from where she came from.

She almost missed what appeared to be a great column from one angle but, from another, turned out to be the staircase she was looking for. Skidding slightly and then turning on a dime, she hastily ascended the spiral steps, thinking, _Wouldn't it be easier with something like Google Maps giving me directions, telling me how far each piece of the route is, how long it'll take me... without any traffic, of course..._

But then she reached the mouth of the stairs, and had to blink hard to make sure she wasn't imagining things. Xan had almost grown used to the cloned labyrinth of halls that were below, and had assumed it would be like that the entire time. That you'd need a string to find your way through it all, and if you spun around a few times you'd forget which direction you came from.

And even though the TARDIS was obviously bigger on the inside, she hadn't been able to see until now just _how_ big it could be.

The room was the size of Grand Central Station, enclosed by a great geodesic dome of grey metal and the calcified coppery exoskeleton that bespoke the biotic nature of the ship. It was all so very alive, and organic, so much grown rather than built, yet it had a wonderfully complex, crystalline order.

Two main pieces of the picture caught Xan's attention: the tall pit strung with walkways that was carved out of the center, and the rupture in the ceiling. It cut through the triangles and mesh of girders, marring the shape with a long scar. Its edges rippled and seemed to be shriveling like paper in a flame. It was beginning to resemble... it was becoming just like the scalloped figures they saw outside, looking for all the world like solidified, kaleidoscopic oil slicks that had been nibbled at by billions of microcosmic mice.

_Hurry it up, girl!_

The order must have come from her head, but sounded briefly as though someone had actually spoken. Instead of leaping into action, which had no doubt been the intended result, Xan froze. _That voice..._ Her face crawled with fear now, and it had to be either flushed or bone white...

_( ... pale, pale skin stretched over limbs like thin rubber sheets; cold, silvery eyes like the little dark holes at the end of the muzzle of a gun; the voice whispering in her mind and filling it with the pounding of a double pulse...)_

Xan gasped and stumbled to the ground.

Wiping her forehead, she pushed herself back onto her feet, and, without fully realizing it, frantically pressed two fingers under the back of her jaw.

And then she let out a breath, steadied herself. It wasn't uncommon for people to hear voices, and for her it was almost guaranteed when she was tired. Maybe that was it. Being pulled through the singularity had probably shaken up her synapses, so now she needed to sleep and reorganize them.

And besides, she _did_ need to hurry. If it really was... if the voice wasn't just her subconscious, why was it being helpful? Why would it have _good_ _advice?_ Slightly reassured, Xan looked around for descending stairs. _Down a flight, over the bridge... I should have thought about what the Doctor meant when he mentioned a 'bridge'..._

The last shreds of the memory vanished as her feet tapped and echoed over the metal-like grille on the steps, and Xan found herself standing on one side of a long, thin overpass. She didn't pause as she stepped out over the gulf, but craned her neck every which way, allowing herself a small sigh of pleasure as she looked down, and saw tiny lights from other rooms sparkling below. She ran one finger over the intricate bars of the railing, letting it hop on its own from rung to thin purple-gold rung, as if plucking a scale on a carbonate harp or xylophone. Out of the sheer joy of speed, Xan let her feet move her from a fast walk to a buoyant, child-like jog.

What came next? Ah, yes, take a right, then into an elevator vortex. Which was what, exactly? Xan swiftly veered down the right corridor, and began to search around for the next step of the instructions. The halls had returned to their previous maze-like state, but seemed far less geometric than those just outside the console room. How often did anyone come down here? The hallways had once, perhaps, been for passenger use, but the TARDIS, left to her own devices. had grown over them, like how a tree envelops a fence and pushes paving stones up with its expanding roots. And Xan was positive that the walls and floor were not perpendicular anymore.

So would the elevator vortex still be functioning, whatever it was? Xan thought she would (in the words of the Supreme Court) know it when she saw it, but that was apparently not the case, because she didn't. Stymied, she rubbed her hands against the slightly warped lines cut into the wall. Could they still be read? What would be the word for _elevator vortex_? _Movement... transportation... lift..._ none of them in her meager vocabulary. _Elevator... to elevate, to rise_... Or maybe not _rise_, but _fall_... Yes! That could be it, and she knew the word for _to fall_, didn't she? _Ehr'selon_, pronounced very much like _Rassilon_, or her own last name, _Russell_.

This brought her up short. For the first time she noticed that similarity. _My last name could very well be Rassilon,_ she thought in surprise, _if I was the 'fallen star' instead of the 'falling' one. An infinitive also serves as a participle, so 'Rassilon' means 'fallen' and my name means 'falling.' _

Still musing over this, she tried to locate the syllables that might be a part of the elevator's label. It made it easier to look for something that resembled her name, because those symbols had been burned into her memory.

"Fifth floor down," she muttered to herself, running her hands over the circles. "Elevator vortex, fifth floor down. Fifth floor- AGHH!"

The world had erupted into cyan light, and Xan had been unable to keep in a yell of shock. There was a violent feeling of vertigo, a horrifyingly extended moment of disorientation, and then it all ground to a halt.

Gingerly, she took her hand off of the symbol on the wall which was, along with the floor, still glowing blue. A choked lump in her chest made Xan feel exactly as if she had swallowed a billiard ball. At first glance nothing was different, but she spotted the incongruity immediately: these walls and floors met at right angles.

"Voice. Activated. Lift," she hiccupped. "He could have _warned_ me." Now that the moment had passed, retrospectively it didn't seem so bad. In fact... She hopped up, refreshed. "That was _fun_," she said, evilly grinning. Part of her wanted to keep experimenting with the vortex, but the lure of new discoveries was even stronger. Like a box guarded by Death herself... Wasn't it interesting, she considered, that the Time Lords personified Death as a woman?

Her thoughts kept flitting from one place to the next as she came to the end of the instructions. Antepenultimate door, with the wheel... surprisingly there was no ambiguity. At the lock, she found it was covered by a hatch that revealed a keypad, and even that was basic, as the buttons showed a simple dot pattern for the numbers, like die pips. Xan tapped out 3-5-9, the lock made a click, and when she turned the brass wheel the door cranked open.

A panoply of artifacts lined the shelves of the storeroom, some strangely mundane and others indescribably queer. It would have taken her some time to rummage through it all - it was abominably messy, with everything coated in a sheen of dust and categorized in possibly alphabetical order rather than size, color, use, or any sane system. Xan guess it was alphabetical because one of the nearest objects to the door was actually an aardvark shell, and it held in it several fresh-looking apples and a sprig of (she checked the label twice to be sure) aconite. How far in would she need to go for 'big black box'? Unless it was under O for 'obviously ominous object', or D for 'death-and-doom-dealing diamond'. Or was it actually under A, she thought cleverly, from the inscription?

And yes, there was a box, smaller than she thought it would be (the Doctor had been too generous with his mimed description), and there on the lid was the symbol like an infinity sign or a figure eight.

Xan lifted it in her hands and felt the ridged wood (was it wood?), tested its weight, traced out the prophetic label. Then she peered at the heavy jeweled padlock, knocked it, tugged on it gently...

... the lock gave way with a barely audible click.

**AN: Did you catch it? Or should I say, them? Two little nuggets of information; one will be revisited and the other won't, at least not in this story, so stay tuned...**


	7. The Diamond of Gallifrey

**AN: All right, here we go! Wow! It felt good to get this out of my system. Reviews for this chapter in particular would be hugely appreciated. ****I would love feedback on my ideas. ****To anyone who's been following this story: this is just the beginning of the coordinated insanity my mind is spewing for this story. Prepare for more.**

In the now dimly-lit console room, the Doctor waited, cross-legged on the floor with his knees pulled up so they formed a pinstriped pretzel. He wasn't sure _why_ he knew, but he had a feeling that the TARDIS was adrift in quite possibly the most dangerous place imaginable. It was where even the Doctor's people were afraid to go. As the ancient human sailors dreaded the edge of the world, so the Time Lords feared the edge of reality. And they, unlike the humans, were justified, because their edge was very, very real.

_Here be dragons._ He and Xan had been pushed off the edge of the world and had no way to climb back up. For all they knew, they would keep on falling.

And they'd only been traveling together for a few days now. Things were really going quite well.

At the moment, there wasn't much the Doctor could do with the power as drained as it was. None of the instruments seemed to be working, and there was a very numbing quality about the encroaching cold. Unable to function in total inaction, he leaned over and rummaged through the crate, pulling out a pale wax candle. Idly, he bent it in his hands, and instead of breaking, it made little cracking noises and round pockets of the body began to glow. Finally he bent the wick over, and with a snap a pseudo-flame appeared around the tip. He unfolded, rolled onto his stomach, and pointed the glow-stick candle into the machinery below the grille.

"What's going on in there, old girl?" he asked, propping himself up on his elbows. "What d'you make of all this? Who'd have thought? It's like a gothic cathedral out there." The Doctor hooked his fingers in the grate and lifted up the panel, then reached inside with the candle. "Brilliant, isn't it?" he grinned. "Mad and weird and incredible, just like you and me, eh?"

He leaned in further, and his smile slowly faded. "Where did that come from?" the Doctor muttered. The light was playing along the surface of the floor, and caught in the halo was a wide tear with shredded edges, curling back and twisting up even as he watched. "What's happening to you?"

Without thinking, The Doctor reached out to touch the floor.

_Who-?_

Like the voices you hear when you're half-asleep, louder than a memory, as if someone was standing behind you. A short, interrupted noise that you probably dreamed, but you just can't be sure...

His throat tightened. The Doctor sat up very quickly, and ended up cracking his head on the edge of the floor. "That's not good," he proclaimed, pressing a fist against his skull and making a face. "Not good at _all_... ow..." Even though he'd previously determined the scientific instruments to be broken, he leaned over out of habit and peered at one of the dials, rolled his eyes at it, turned away.

He stopped. His eyes widened, then narrowed, and his eyebrow twitched up. Then the Doctor twisted around and leaned in to stare at the numbers, confusion written all over his face.

Finally light dawned. It was ridiculous how long it had taken him to figure it out. "Oh, what am I _thinking?_" the Doctor cried, exasperated. "You're not broken! You're just not picking up any readings for all that timey-wimey stuff because there _isn't_ any out here!" He began to circle the console, eyes darting from readout to readout. "It's all something entirely different... Of _course_ they're not broken! What kind of idiot am I?" he burst out, slapping his forehead with the heel of his hand.

Which he immediately realized was a very bad idea. The Doctor clutched his head, grunting in pain. "Ooh, ow, damn..."

"Sounds like you answered your own question," Xan said dryly. She was standing in the doorway and had the black box tucked under one arm.

"Oh, how amusing," said the Doctor as he winced. "Please forgive me if I'm not struck senseless by your wit."

"It's not _me_ doing that, it's you. Here's your _box_," she said, holding it out. "Seems like all I do around here is fetch boxes for you. And the elevator vortex was quite fun, by the way."

The Doctor grimaced. "Oh, _no_. I _completely_ forgot about that..."

Xan caught his arm before he could slap his forehead again. "Do you want a concussion?" she asked incredulously.

"Um." He looked at his hand. "Thank you."

"Anything for you, Doctor. Is it me, or do you seem a little preoccupied?"

He awarded her a look of mild surprise and scorn. "_Preoccupied?_ Me? In what universe?" As he casually swiped the black casket and flipped it around in his hands, Xan pointed down and mouthed, _this one?_, which the Doctor ignored. "Well, _hello_, you," he said to the box in affectionate tones. "I always wondered when you'd come in handy..."

"Doctor... there's something a bit weird that..."

"Where's... my... screwdriver...?" the Doctor was saying, patting the floor around him. "Sorry, hold on a mo..."

"In your coat?" Xan suggested, clasping her hands behind her back.

"Well, of _course_ it's in my coat, what do you think?" responded the Doctor irritably. He searched around for a few more seconds before pausing. "Ah, yes, that's right..." he murmured, and stuffed his hand in his shirt pocket. "Now where's the box?"

"Sitting in front of you," Xan told him. She tapped his head. "And you're right here."

"That's..." He stopped and looked up in consternation. "_Thanks_," he told her, with a sarcastic smile. "Thank you _very_ much for reminding me."

"Come on," said Xan, not unkindly. "Don't pretend like nothing's bothering you."

"That's absurd. I'm not _pretending_..." The Doctor's thin fingers found the lock. Slowly he tilted it up into the meager light. "_Now_ something's bothering me..."

"That's right, I was going to tell you. That was broken when I found it. It must have been very old."

"Yes," muttered the Doctor, "Very, _very_ old, and that's why it shouldn't be like this. A bullet at point blank range probably wouldn't dent it. And it's not just a key you need. It's an isomorphic lock, so you have to have the right DNA and everything..."

Xan paused, and for a moment her mind was transparent. The Doctor could see her evaluating whether this was a threat. Finally she said, "Then something must have opened it before I found it. When did you get it? Why is it so dangerous?"

"Oh, couple hundred years ago, I think. Stole it, actually. Right out from under the noses of the High Council." He smiled as he reminisced. "They never suspected me... thought the new Castellan put it back in the tomb of Rassilon, but he had a replica the whole time. We were all there, too... we meaning me, that is... That was back when there were only five of me. That I knew of. Except Four just couldn't be bothered to... Well! Anyway! Not to worry! As long as what I'm looking for is still in here, we should be right back to full power in no time!" The Doctor unhooked the jeweled lock and tossed it into the immovable crate.

"Now," he said, and his tone was one of action, "This is called the Box of Rassilon..."

"Well, _that's_ an original name... it _is_ a box..."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Xan, save it, all right? You can whinge about it later. Of _course_ it's unoriginal. That's the whole point."

"It is?" she asked, puzzled.

"Have you ever wondered why I go by 'the Doctor' and the Master is... or _was_... 'the Master' and you called yourself after a figure of speech? 'Falling star'? Or why we called our planet _literally_, 'our planet' - _cwl'frey_? It's because names - _truly original names_ - carry a great deal of power. I'll _try_ to explain why, so you don't _bother_ me about it later, so _listen_."

Xan was paying close attention now. "Go on," she said, nodding slightly but keeping her gaze fixed.

"Remember when I first met you?" asked the Doctor quickly. "Remember what you said?"

"Something like... what are you doing in that wreck-?"

"No, no, when _I_ first met _you_, not the other way around, don't you see?"

"When I met... no, when _you_ met..."

"You blundered into my TARDIS while I was repairing, and I stole that part from you and-"

"-gave me a little candy thing, right. I remember."

"And you said that if I took the part from you and it ended up in that box you were carrying-"

"Oh, that's right. I _was_ carrying a box. _Another_-"

"Xan. I'm _talking_."

She subsided. "Sorry."

"It's rude when you talk at the same time someone else does. Isn't that funny? Did you know that?"

"Does that mean you were being rude, too?" As the Doctor blinked at her, she went on, "Well, since we were both talking at the same time, that makes us both rude unless you have priority because you were talking first, or because you were answering my question, but that sort of makes your response belong to me because you're _giving_ it to me at my request, so then-"

The Doctor calmly placed a hand over her mouth. "You're using up a lot of air," he said placidly. "Which we're a bit low on. _Do_ let me finish before we both asphyxiate. Now, as I was saying, one of the powers of a name is _creation_. Because it's so _simple_ to make a name, and it doesn't take any new matter or energy, but it's a new _idea_, so it had to come from _somewhere_. And that... that inception born from sentient thought... that carries energy. Einstein's equation's missing a variable, did you know that? First lesson of any time travel course on Gallifrey: E=_i_mc2 and the _i_ stands for intelligence. Think about it four-dimensionally, about the part, and how it's an infinite loop. It has no origin. An idea can be like that too, can't it? And if that's the case, that means ideas are just as real as particles, doesn't it?"

Xan nodded, fascinated.

"Now, the thing about time... If I take my hand away, will you interrupt me?"

She hesitated, then nodded again. The Doctor sighed and kept his hand in place. "The thing about time," he continued, "is that this kind of paradox isn't rare. In fact, it's _more_ common than not. Ah, see, there, _that_ got your attention, didn't it? Most matter, energy, or ideas in the universe are without origin. Except the reason why no one can find that out is that the only people who _could_ would have to be time-travelers. But if you are, you see it right away. Four-dimensional maps are just riddled with circles... well, not _circles_..." He stared into space. "Four-dee round things... you know what I mean..."

Xan made a muffled noise of astonishment and discovery. She excitedly pointed at the box, tracing the writing on the lid, the symbols formed from circles and arcs and crescents.

"Ah, you like that? Like that feeling of everything running together like cogs in a watch, fitting perfectly... Yes, that's why the writing's like that. And all those circles, all those loops are enclosed by one big loop, and that's the universe." His eyes were shining, and a wide smile was slowly peeling open his face as he spoke. "As far as we know, the universe created itself. But that's just matter and energy in a loop. _Ideas_ aren't like that. And a truly, perfectly, genuinely original _name_... that's the simplest kind of idea there is and it doesn't come from anywhere. So it's like a miniature Big Bang right there. You see, humans are always named after something, aren't they? After saints or seasons or heroes or flowers... or even words that just sound nice. But Time Lords and Gallifreyan ideas aren't _named_ after anything. We keep the names hidden, use titles and grandiose nomenclature to contain all that power. And we're not sure, but we _think_ that might be one of the reasons we've got all this energy locked away inside us. And _now_, Xan, _now_..." His voice seemed to have been honed to a single wave of sound by an audial pencil sharpener, so intense was his tone. "_Now_ I'm going to take from the Box of Rassilon which is a box that belonged to Rassilon a diamonoid memory chip called the Diamond of Gallifrey and place it in the TARDIS and she's going to read what's left of the true name of my home planet, the name that Rassilon himself used to create the Time Lord empire and I _think_... I think that _maybe_, just maybe, that's enough power to keep us alive out here. Does that sound like a good plan to you?"

_Yes_, Xan thought. _Yes, that does. Oh, wow._

At that point the Doctor, sporting a huge, cheeky grin, reached inside the ebony casket. "Hold on to these for a second," he told the girl, passing her a handful of black scrolls. "Where is it, where is it...? Ah! Here it is!" He let Xan go, and then held up a hand for her to see. Pinched between his fingers was a crystal cut so precisely it flashed light in every direction. _"This_ is the Diamond of Gallifrey. Tiny little quantum USB made of tetrahedral carbon speckled with impurities. There's a port on the console where I can plug this in but there's a problem."

Xan was mildly surprised. "Just _one?"_ she asked.

"No, but the other ones really aren't as important, so we'll ignore them for now. But if I just let the TARDIS come to full power, that'll mean that it'll start all its normal functions and a lot of those involve venting excess energy and particles, but we're not in normal space-time here. Anything we do here could change the future of the entire _universe._ We could tweak the dark matter ratio so space is too dense to sustain life. Make this plane of existence collide with another and set off a whole chain of Big Bangs that weren't supposed to happen. Switch the prevalent state from baryonic to antimatter - we could literally_ reverse the polarity of the entire universe!_ So I need to reroute the TARDIS's power so it feeds back on itself instead of releasing waste at the same time as the diamond is plugged in, so _you_ have to do that second part." The Doctor grabbed Xan's wrist and pressed the crystal into her hand. "Don't drop that."

"I won't," Xan said dazedly.

The Doctor pulled her around the console and positioned her in front of the computer. "So," he said, "listen to me, and do _exactly_ as I say."

**AN: By the way, Xan's meeting with the Fourth Doctor that gets referenced takes place in my original story, which I haven't uploaded yet because it needs a lot of work, and is as obscenely long as the Baker Scarf. You can google 'bootstrap paradox' to understand the infinite loop idea better. Also, you may be beginning to see how my mind works. I managed to explain Gallifreyan writing, the whole 'power of a name' thing, the Box of Rassilon (from 'The Five Doctors', rememberrrr?), why Time Lords are powerful, cheesy labels, and the nature of the universe in one chapter! And I_ still_ haven't gotten around to the craziness out in the Before. This is why I love to write Doctor Who. It's so exhilarating to explain all the nonsense it thinks up. With _science!_ Oh wow, I sound like Xan right there, don't I?**


	8. Here Be Dragons

If they had taken a coral reef and brought it to the bottom of the sea, where all is dark and the light comes from the neon glow of comb jellies and lantern fish and sea devils seeking prey, and then they had made the coral perfectly formed in every way and without end to its complexity, and then taken out every last bit of matter and energy and light until all that was left was an idea, an impression on the fabric of a ripple of reality, then they might have created What Came Before Time.

And they did create it. They created it in the sense that individual coral polyps create the atoll around an island in the sea that isn't just any island. It was an island born of rock and magma and it's still got fire in its belly. If the pressure is too great, then it might... just... blow.

With the right conditions. The fabric of space and time is full of upheaval. There's always a possibility to create, but the variables must still be exactly right. The hardest part's always the beginning. After that, things generally take care of themselves. When thinking in cosmic terms, of course.

But still, sometimes all it needs is a spark. Something new, something different. Something that's not where it's supposed to be.

Although when considered directly, there was only one place in the Before where anything could be. And that was here. There is only ever the here and now. That kind of unity cannot exist longer than an instant, but to the higher-dimensional mind, an instant is its own unique brand of forever.

Forever is a long time. A lot of things can happen over the course of forever. In fact, everything does. And one of the things that can happen is that facts can become laws. Laws, in turn, can become rules, and rules can become demands, and demands can become needs. And then needs become wants. And wants become...

Fact: things exist, and things cease existence. Law: things cannot continue to exist if they cease to do so. Rule: things that try not to cease are more likely to continue to exist. Demand: things should try to exist. Need: to exist. Want: to live.

... wants become thoughts...

Thought: I want to live.

... thoughts become actions...


	9. The Signal

The Doctor found himself lying on his back, spread-eagled, with the ceiling of the TARDIS slowly coming into focus. He smelled smoke, and there was a very soupy quality to the air. Sparks fizzled sporadically over his head, and his arms were numb. What happened? Had something gone wrong? No, something had _nearly_ gone wrong.

Ah, yes.

"That didn't exactly go as planned," he said carefully.

When that didn't cue any response, he added, "I think we're alive, though. So that's always a plus." He rolled over and unsteadily lifted himself to his feet, stumbled, caught himself on the console, and wobbled upright again. Then he leaned to one side and the other, trying to see around to the other side of the central pillar. "You there?"

A small, restrained, somewhat strangled noise. It sounded almost like a whimper.

The Doctor walked around the console, concerned. On the way, he performed a quick visual scan of the readings, and to his relief everything seemed to be functioning normally. "Xan? Are you all right?"

"I had everything under control," she said hoarsely. Her voice box seemed not to be fully functional, because she was speaking in nothing more than a very loud whisper.

"I'm... sure you did," the Doctor told her, mentally crossing his fingers behind his back. "And it all turned out all right, didn't it?"

"Nnh."

"All fine. Everything good."

"Mm-hmm." Xan was standing over the controls in a state of frozen, desperate nonchalance, with a fixed, glazed expression.

The Doctor tried to continue his check-up, and that worked until he reached her. "Could you, um, move...?"

"Yes." She didn't.

"Will you?"

"Yes." She didn't. He took hold of her shoulders and forced her into a seat. "_Move_," he ordered.

"Okay," mouthed Xan. The word didn't get much farther than her lips.

All while the Doctor was making absolute sure that the power was stabilized, Xan sat on the couch and stared at the world through a slightly dizzy blur. Her brain kept on replaying what happened over and over, and every time it looked worse. _What did I do wrong?_ she thought unhappily. And then, a second layer of thoughts was asking the same question, but with detached calm and calculation. _Sources of error_, it said to her. _Explain your sources of error_.

"So!" said the Doctor with false cheer. "Well, this is awfully dandy-"

"No," Xan said.

"It could be worse. Power's back. We're..." He began to list a set of items, but only got as far as the first. "Not going to _suffocate_ any more-"

"No."

"But it _is_ back, you can't just keep saying no about everything, and are you even _listening_ or are you just saying a particular word with no context to the conversation, _if_ we're actually having a conversation-"

"_No_. No, no, _no_. That's... it _can't_ have been the download frequency," she said, ignoring him and getting up. Xan strode up to the console and flipped on the monitor. "The numbers were correct, I _know_ they were. Something else was wrong."

"Xan."

"Have to _think_... there was a glitch in the-"

"Please listen to me."

"I _checked_ everything _really_ carefully, there wasn't that _much_ that could have gone wrong here..." She sounded halfway to panic.

"OI. YOU," said the Doctor loudly, "Get over here _now_, and don't touch _anything else_." He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her away from the controls. "Now listen to me, and when I say listen I _mean_ that."

She was frantically trying not to look him in the eye. "I screwed up," she gasped. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm such an idiot, I should have known to switch the-"

"Stop trying to get me to be sympathetic," he ordered. "Because _that's not happening._" The Doctor managed to back Xan into a corner, and pulled her head up to look at him. "And you're right. You made a mistake. You should have switched the download frequency once you saw that the energy translation stream was overloading the computer cortex. Hey. Hey, I'm talking to you. _Listen_."

He shook her a little. "Yes, okay, you messed up, so what? I didn't tell you what to do if the download failed, or if I bodged the reroute, or if the console _electrified_ like that! At least you know what you should have done, but still, what's that going to change? Come on. You made a mistake. I make mistakes, you make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes. Don't get whiny about it."

Xan was about to protest this loudly, but realized that wouldn't help her non-whiny image much. "That's not quite fair," she said, when she'd got a handle on her pitch and tone. "I'd call it something closer to supplication-"

"That's not what I meant. I'd rather not hear you whiny 'cause... see, I like you, Xan. You're not a bad person to live with, honestly. You're clever, and you're fun, and you know what?" He shifted his weight to one leg and tilted his head to one side, and when he resumed speaking his voice was softer. "People I travel with don't always... sometimes they don't end up all right. Sometimes they leave here different. Sometimes they lose everything they learned. Sometimes they come back the same as they left, and sometimes they don't come back at all. So I promised myself not long before I met you that I wouldn't take anyone else with me. Not ever. But then you showed up." He stopped and coughed into his fist slightly, shuffled his feet.

"Oh," she said.

The Doctor, suddenly his usual droll self, added, "But if you turn out to be a _whiner_, I'm not going to do it. I'm just _not_. All right? I've been around for a long time, and I don't want to hear any more whining. So I hope whatever you were planning on doing wasn't _that_, because if it were, I'd be dropping you off at the nearest habitable planet once we get out of here."

"I'm sorry," Xan said softly. "I am allowed to be sorry, aren't I?"

"Really?" said the Doctor, whose left eyebrow had swooped up in the way only his could. "You _think?_"

She covered her eyes. "I should have apologized, shouldn't I?"

"For nearly getting me electrocuted? Just for that? Aw, come on. Don't be _stupid_."

"_That_ sounded sincere," she muttered. "Lovely time to get _sarcastic_." She paused. "Oh wait."

The Doctor waved his hand in dismissal. "Don't fret over it. You don't have to worry about the life-saving, dangerous stuff. That's my job."

And that, thought Xan, was worse than being told off. If only he'd been a little bit angry, like she'd disappointed him, that he needed her to be more capable than that, that he expected more of her than he would of, say, a talking ape. She shut her eyes, thought _I hate people_, and opened them again when the feeling passed.

"All right, so here we are, then... now all we have to do is figure out where here is, what's going on out there..." He headed for the hall door, and vanished behind it.

Xan wandered over to the console and stared at it absently, then surreptitiously bent down and peered at a screen. She heard the Doctor's voice drifting through the door.

"Probably best not to send a probe, because we don't want to interact much with the particles out there.. quantum's a right pain in the- what are you doing?" Halfway to her, he rethought his impulse to yank her back, and ended up skidding to a halt behind her, trying to contort himself they didn't collide. "Er. Wh-what are you doing?" he repeated, trying to sound causal. _She'll kill me for this_.

"I'm just- _agh! don'-_-" She beat him off with her elbows, with the kind of hyper-defensive twitchiness that covers up guilt. "I wasn't doing anything! I was just looking! With my eyes!"

"Are you sure?"

"Look, just because I sound guilty doesn't mean I am! If you don't want me to sound guilty, then don't startle me!"

"If I want an alibi, then yeah, I won't..."

"I was just looking! I seriously was! You didn't even leave me enough time to do anything else!"

The Doctor thought this over, and then said, "That's not really reassuring."

"Well, I _could_ say that I wasn't going to do anything, but I could be lying, and you don't know if I am. So, yeah. Suspiciously evasive facts. Why not? They're all I've got."

"It's not that I don't trust you with... yeahhh, maybe I don't, but this is _different_. _I'm_ not doing anything either. I'm being careful, and taking my time, and..." He seemed at a loss. "... all that other stuff that you people know about and I do also so I won't bother with listing them. You know. Those things."

"Those things," Xan agreed gravely. "I know about them too."

"So, for example, I wouldn't start being experiment-y science-y, sort of _curious_ about something that, let's say as a nonspecific random example, had previously _gone wrong _and I wanted to find out why..."

"I wasn't trying to... I was just..." She pointed at the console. "Looking at that light," she said hurriedly. "'Cause it's blinking. Blinking light, how odd is that?"

"Or, maybe I was- _what blinking light?_"

"That one, right there..."

The Doctor nearly fell over trying to see. "Lights... blinking... doesn't sound good... Show me which one! Where is it, where is it? What's-"

Xan pointed again. The green bulb was one of many embedded in a small panel that was hidden under a bundle of candy-cane-striped wires, and it wasn't flashing or pulsing like a siren. It just blinked.

"I don't..." The Doctor leaned forward. "What." He didn't look or sound worried. He didn't seem startled. He didn't act surprised. He simply said, without even ending it with a query, "What."

"So, what does that mean?" asked Xan, for the moment simply inquisitive. She had a small smile on her face, but it started to fade. "What does it do?"

"It's... blinking..."

"Yes, it's blinking. What does that _mean?_"

"I don't... know..." He laid his hand on the panel. "How can I not know... what it does...?"

"Was it there before?" Xan asked sharply. The Doctor stared at her. "Just tell me if it was there before. You've seen it before."

"Yes," murmured the Doctor. "Yes, it was. It's always been there."

"But it's never been on?"

"I dunno... maybe it has..."

"What do you mean, maybe?"

"I don't know! The TARDIS is a really old model! Some of the things here are practically _vestigial!_"

"What does the panel do?" Xan half-yelled. "What do the wires do? What're they all _for?_" Even as she spoke, the other lights of the panel began to flick on with tiny bell-like chimes.

"They're... they're..." And the Doctor turned white, and put his hands over his mouth. "I remember. I _remember_." He stumbled back, and fell against the railing. "I remember what it is... it's _old_, older than I am, older than..."

"_What!_" she exclaimed. "_What is it?_ Tell me what it is!"

"It's a signal," he whispered. "Sent from one Gallifreyan science vessel to another... it's another TARDIS, Xan. It's another Time Lord."


	10. Answering the Phone

**AN: This chapters and the next one were originally going to be uploaded together, but it all ended up being too long and so they are going up in two parts. So that's why this one's a little short. It's also not as important to the plot, but it is really important to understanding Ten, which is why I left it in. Because the stories I'm writing are set after the last time we see the Tenth Doctor, his character is evolving past what we know. He was really starting to change even before he regenerated. I'm trying to extrapolate his character development and guess at what he will become. And how Xan will affect that path. So this is subtle, but it is pretty important. I'm not saying this for the readers, but really for the reviewers, so that they can know what it is I'm trying to do and tell me if I've done it.**

Shocked silence.

It was magnificent. It was one of those silences where you became uncomfortably aware of the fact that your tongue cannot fit in your mouth - you feel like it might roll out on its own - and you suddenly start thinking in nothing but complete sentences - _My tongue feels weird right now. How couldn't I have noticed it before? It's horrible! _- that start to loop like in a feverish half-sleep - _I can't believe I'm thinking about it in complete sentences... I can't believe... I can't believe I'm thinking... Thinking this in a complete sent... Can't believe I'm... _- All of it sounds so ridiculously scripted but your tongue won't just stay in your mouth... thoughts just won't stay in your head... everything loses all significance like a word you repeat over and over until you undo your own humanity and the illusion of meaning... Nothing... Nothing...

Until everything reorganizes itself in a way that makes _sense_.

"I'm not surprised," said Xan at long last. "I'm really not."

The Doctor gave her a brief look that managed to communicate a whole monologue's worth of complex and powerful emotions, but the main theme was gratitude. Relief and gratitude. He smiled and made a sort of generic friendly gesture that ended in physical contact - it was a strange and improbable blend of a light shoulder punch and a hand squeeze - and said to himself quietly, "_There's_ a good reason to have a human around."

Xan hadn't caught what he'd said, and wondered what it was.

"And yeah, when you think about it like that," he grinned, popping to his feet and speaking at a normal volume. "Simple enough."

"I never actually _said_ how I thought about it," said Xan, who had wanted to be asked.

The Doctor put his hands behind his back and recited, "The dimension we're occupying existed before the universe began; therefore inaccessible to anyone who does not have a time machine; therefore the signal originates from a time machine. If it does, then someone sent the signal, therefore either the occupant of the machine is alive or the machine is alive itself. If the latter, probably a TARDIS. If the former, then the time machine can hold together in a void, therefore is capable of travel through space as well, and of existing in non-standard, or possibly _relative_ dimensions... So, TARDIS. And given the fact that _we're_ here, it seems perfectly reasonable that in the million or so years that the Time Lords were capable of temporal manipulation, someone else would have had a problem like ours. Therefore, highly probable." He gave Xan a sidelong glance and a smile. "Did I get it?"

"Almost. I didn't use 'therefore'."

"What'd you have there, then?"

"Hence. I used 'hence'."

He wrinkled his nose. "_Hence_, eh? That's right posh, that is..."

"So who's answering the phone?" Xan asked. "Why don't you?"

"No, why don't you?"

"Are you _joking?_"

"No, I'm serious, you answer it. Communications button's right there, go on." He gave her a little push.

"Come on, Doctor, stop it."

"I'll set up the channel for you-"

"The _heck?_ It's your ship, _you_ answer it! What could I say to a... a _Time Lord_?"

He shrugged. "Something clever. You can always do that with me."

Xan realized that the Doctor was actually going to make her do this. "What could I _possibly_ say to them?" she said angrily. "Is this just your idea of punishing me for screwing up? I couldn't handle one responsibility, but you don't think I've been put in my place quite yet, so you give me a bigger one. Is that what it is?"

"What you'd _like_ it to be," corrected the Doctor, who leaned back against a column of coral and folded his arms. "What you'd like _me_ to be."

After a second, Xan shut her eyes. "No. Not... not anymore."

"What does that mean, not anymore?"

"It means... just forget it. Start that over." She hated the way her first impulse was always suspicion. If only there was some way of testing out the way words would sound coming out without having to commit to them. Make sure, as it were, that you said what you were trying to say. "Why don't you want to talk to whoever it is?" Xan asked, trying to keep an edge of irritation out of her voice.

For a brief moment, the Doctor looked very small and vulnerable, like the world was falling away from him. He swallowed and then numbly echoed, "What could I _possibly_ say?"

The signals kept chiming softly.

"You're busy," Xan said reluctantly. "We've just got here, and everything needs fixing, so you can't be spared to answer the signal. Does that seem like a fair excuse?"

There was another moment of stillness, and Xan wasn't quite sure if the Doctor had heard her. His eyes were focused on something to far away to see. Then he inhaled sharply, and glanced her way without exactly meeting her gaze. "Yeah, that sounds about right." He rocked forward off the column.

A sound louder than a chime now, and more abrupt.

"We're being hailed," declared Xan. "Sorry, but I always wanted to say that."

"Well, go on, answer it."

She dragged her shoe over the floor contemplatively. "I'm... I'm scared to," she confessed.

"What for? You're not..." The Doctor looked a bit serious. "You're not afraid of the Time Lords, are you?"

"No, no," Xan said, shaking her head spastically and almost laughing. "No, I'm... I'm nervous. I'm all jittery - oh help, I'm getting _stage fright_, this is awful." She put her face in her hands. "This... oh, _god_..."

The Doctor smiled ruefully. "So am I," he admitted with a giggle. "Me too."

Xan lifted her face out of her hands. "You coward, you," she accused.

"I'm not-"

"Yes, you are."

The call again, and this time the sound ended with static, and it didn't seem as though whatever was on the other side was finished. The static held for a few moments longer, and then a sharp noise like an intake of breath.

"_Contact,_" said a voice over the comlink. "_I repeat, contact. Is anyone there?_"


	11. The Maven

**AN: Part 2 of Part 10... oh, never mind, just call it Chapter 11. That's cool too.**

Xan bit her tongue. It wasn't that the voice over the comlink was sudden, but she'd been startled anyway.

"_Unidentified TARDIS, please respond. Is anyone there?_" The words were spoken in a male baritone with a refined BBC English accent. The last query was followed by hesitation, and then, "_Are you all right?_"

Tapping the Doctor on the shoulder, Xan whispered, "What's the standard response?" She gave the Doctor a pleading look. "Doctor, I don't know what to say!"

The Doctor scratched his neck, and then made an open gesture of generality. "I don't know, just think of something," he said unhelpfully.

_That coward,_ she said to herself, and took a hesitant step towards the console.

"_Have you sustained damage?_" the speaker continued, with delicate and detached concern. "_Please respond to transmission. Are you in need of assistance?_"

Xan swallowed and thought hard.

Then a finger punched the reply button, and there was a _bleep_. "Er. Hello," said the Doctor. His voice shook only a tiny bit, and that would probably be lost in the static. "Who _is_ this? Who's there?"

From behind the Doctor's outstretched arm, Xan let her stomach unclench in relief.

"_I could ask you the same question,_" answered the stranger's voice. "_Your TARDIS doesn't appear to be registered with any chapter or council..._"

"Is that really important right now?" the Doctor said quickly.

"_Yes,_" said the voice. "_Possibly._"

"Well, it's _my_ TARDIS." He ran a hand through his hair. "I live in it."

"_You live in it?_" said the voice, almost sounding skeptical. "_It's your place of residence?_"

"Yeaahh, that's about right, but," he sniffed, "like I said, not important right now. Bigger things to worry about, wouldn't you say? Now," said the Doctor, lowering his head and leaning closer, "I need you to tell me who you are. Because I don't know why you're here, or how long you've been-"

"_I can tell you all of that_," the voice cut in, amused. "_Quite easily. But this frequency doesn't hold up well in this environment, I'm afraid. Do you require any assistance?_"

"Oh, no, we're... holding up just fine..." The more the Doctor spoke, the greater his discomfort became obvious.

"_Really? How did you overcome the huon vacuum?_"

Now he seemed positively twitchy. "Well, when I say doing fine, I meant, obviously, doing fine except for the fact that we haven't got much power..."

And that was a lie, Xan realized. The energy from the diamond was more than enough; the Doctor had made that very clear. Why was the Doctor hiding the fact that he was using the diamond...?

_... stole it, actually. Right out from under the noses of the High Council..._

So it was definitely not something he was supposed to have. It began to explain why he was so nervous, but Xan didn't think that the Doctor was that concerned with only himself. There had to another reason why he was standing with his skin starting to shine with sweat, with a horrific blank mask over his face.

"... I mean, I've got a bit of reserve, so... And how, by the way, are _you_ running in a huon vacuum? Reserves?"

A pause. "_Reserves,_" agreed the voice. "_That would be it._"

The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "I see," he said.

"_I'm afraid this channel won't stay open for much longer. Send me your coordinates, and I'll bring my TARDIS alongside yours._"

"But how can you navigate-"

"_Ah, sorry. Questions will be answered in person only. There just isn't enough time._"

The Doctor held the comlink down, temporarily cutting off the connection. "So, Xan, what do you think? A trap?"

"He could be trying to help," she offered.

He shook his head. "No, you see, that's not right, 'cos they _never_ are." He rounded the console, knocking back switches and twisting knobs.

"The Time Lords?"

"No, mysterious people who show up out of nowhere." He tugged on a pull chain. "Distress signals. Science teams. Jehovah's Witnesses, people flogging Girl Scout cookies. They've always got their own agenda."

"What about you?" She rolled her eyes. "Don't _you_ show up on that list somewhere?"

"Yeah, I've got an agenda too."

"What is it?"

He smiled. "Fun."

Xan folded her arms over her chest. "Fine, then. Aren't you the tiniest bit curious about this person out there?"

"Yeah, but I've got a sense of self-preservation." Then he sighed. "No, scratch that. I haven't. All right, I'm transmitting my coordinates to you... right... _now_." The Doctor tapped out a sequence of numbers. "Or, what amounts to coordinates out here. It's the relative levels of pseudo-photonic radiation from twelve different angles; I think that's enough to identify our position. But what exactly are you planning on..."

Then they both heard the unmistakable siren sound of a TARDIS materializing. Xan and the Doctor looked at each other.

"I suppose he's flying alongside us now," said Xan. "Or something like that."

"See... you see, there's the problem," the Doctor said, holding up a finger. "We can't go outside, and he can't go outside, because there _isn't_ anything outside-"

"That's debatable."

"Yes, but not by you, Xan, you're nearly nine hundred years younger than me, and you're a human, so don't act superior. My point is, how exactly are we going to get from our TARDIS to his TARDIS without going through the... we can't call it the void, can we? 'Cause I'm not sure it is one..."

"Right, so it _is_ debatable."

"But _not by you_. That's my point. We're calling it Outside from now on."

"No, that's silly. Let's call it... the Before. How about that? The Land Before Time..."

"No," said the Doctor. "That's a show on the telly about little cartoon dinosaurs."

"Yeah, but the name fits _this_ better than it fits _that_... yeah, you know what, let's call it Outside. So can't you make a sort of air corridor through it or... I seem to remember that the TARDIS can do that..."

The Doctor shook his head. "Not out here, think about it. We can't make a bubble of air around us, because there isn't any space for it... and you're going to say, _Oh, but if there isn't any space then we're already next to the other TARDIS_ or something clever like that, yes, you know you were, but the thing is, there _is_ space. There is and there isn't, so we can't go out there. Get it?"

Xan nodded, and said, "No."

"Right, then. How about this... I don't know what's out there, so we're not going out there. Got it? Good. Now let's go outside." He hauled Xan, who was feebly protesting at this abandonment of logic, over to the door, and without further ado, he opened it.

The Doctor's eyes went huge. "No _way_," he said, "Not even _close_ to way... oh, he _can't _have..."

Xan placed one foot out of the TARDIS, and it landed on warm, solid floor. "What just happened?" she asked. "No, don't tell me this is..."

The TARDIS was sitting at the center of a tall room, on a pale glass plate that was slightly ridged, like a ruler. The walls were clean and bare in some spots and riddled with wires and controls in others, but overall the room was empty. The Doctor slowly followed Xan out of the blue wooden door, then closed it behind him and locked it with one hand. Xan turned slightly when she heard the click of the pins, and the Doctor lifted a finger to his lips. He was still very pale.

"Well, well, this is very odd," said a low, pleasant voice. "The chameleon circuit on your TARDIS seems to have broken. What is it trying to be, exactly?"

The Doctor spun around, and spotted the figure standing in the frame of an entrance. "It's a police box," the Doctor said carefully, "Twentieth century Great Britain, Earth."

"I see. And your attire is of Earth as well, isn't it?" asked the man in the door, taking a few echoing steps forward. "But a blue box... People don't notice?"

"Perception filter."

"Ah. But isn't your TARDIS a Type 40? They don't use perception filters, do they? They replaced chameleon circuits in Type 45's." It was still hard to see the figure's features, though he was closer still.

"Well, the circuit broke, so I upgraded her."

"You added a perception filter to a Type 40... that's _impressive!_" His calm tone temporarily gave way to exuberance, and with that, the man suddenly hopped into the light.

He was as tall and thin as the Doctor, and he had a similarly youthful senescence. Xan sometimes thought of the Doctor as an old child, and this particular man gave her the same contradictory impression. He looked a lot younger than his voice had led Xan to believe. His cheekbones were very high and pronounced, his hair was a mat of large dark curls, and he had oddly clear, almost-blue eyes. His clothing was strange, much like a suit except it had a bizarre cut, padding, and on one arm a set of screens and dials. On his hip, where a gun would be on other uniforms, there was a purple-tipped screwdriver that was slightly larger than the Doctor's own.

"I'm very pleased to meet you," said the man, extending both hands. One was bare while the other was gloved. "_T'yr te lyn?_"

To her utter surprise, Xan could hear the last three words the man spoke in both English and Gallifreyan, and she understood them. He'd asked the Doctor his name.

"I'm the Doctor," said the Doctor after a pause, taking the man's hands. Xan noticed, in the way she usually did, how the greeting was not exactly like that of a typical Earth handshake. And of course, that made sense, but it was still an unexpected reminder.

"Doctor," the man acknowledged with a nod. "And who is the young woman?"

The Doctor gave his friend a nudge, because she'd been discreetly using him as a social meat shield. Xan sucked in a breath. Person-to-person contact was something she wasn't very comfortable with. "Alexandra Russell," she said, and held out her hands, trying to reproduce the gesture she'd seen the Doctor perform moments earlier.

"Lord Doctor, Lady Alexandra-"

"I'm not..." Xan started to say, but the Doctor stepped on her foot.

"- good to meet you both. I call myself the Maven. So, welcome to my TARDIS; I hope you don't mind my parking it over yours, but there seemed no better way to do it. And I really am curious to hear what brought you into the Land Before Time."

Xan jabbed the Doctor in the ribs. "_See?_" she hissed. "I _told_ you my name for it was better."

**AN: For those of you who haven't spotted what I did already, I want you all to envision that this is an actual episode of Doctor Who. All right, got it? Now, imagine that the Maven is portrayed by... drumroll... Benedict Cumberbatch! (Everyone runs off to reread his lines in his pwnsome voice.) He's not in any one of his roles, okay, (like, here, the Maven isn't actually Sherlock... or at least, _probably_ not :-D), it's just the same actor. I thought he'd be a really good choice for the role. So if you know what I'm talking about, 1) you're awesome and 2) happy visualization time!**


	12. Type 42

**AN: I am SO SORRY for the long delay! I promise to write this story faster! I was so caught up with putting up 'Falling Star' (the prequel to this story) that I forgot to work on this one, which is a shame because it's my favorite! I wanted to let the whole Maven-is-played-by-Benedict-Cumberbatch thing sink in, but it nearly sunk! So I sat down and wrote this. Please review and comment on my ideas and everything, because that helps me get out more chapters. :) I want to know how well I'm advancing the story.**

The Doctor was beginning to have doubts about this whole thing. "Are you sure this is necessary?" he asked.

"Did you know," said the Time Lord known as the Maven, "that you were in very great danger?" He said it casually, as though this was a common topic for light conversation.

"_Were_ we?" The Doctor dubiously held up a padded suit, one much like the Maven's. "And what in time 'n' space is _this?_"

"What do you think it is? Haven't you ever worn a smart suit before?"

"I think it's a crime against fashion, is what I think," said the Doctor, resolute. "It's hideous. I'm not putting it on."

"Do you know how to survive out here?" the Maven said sternly. "No. You don't. You wouldn't last thirteen hours out here without my expertise. So yes, if you have any good sense, you _are_ putting it on."

"This is so _cool_," Xan was saying, as she emerged from the opaque changing column, fastening the last of the circuit-like cinches of the regrettably lurid outfit around her arms. The interface on the wrist twisted in a circle and then a blue light swept over her body. "Did you see that? It _scanned_ me! This is awesome!"

"Xan, you cannot _possibly_ be wearing that rubbish. It's tasteless and it looks like something out of an overbudgeted science fiction reboot!"

"I know you are but what am I?" mocked Xan, sticking out her tongue. "I _like_ it."

"It's the most unattractive piece of clothing I've ever seen, and you're taking it off, _right_ now."

"Yeah, and then you're going to make me walk around in my underwear?"

The Maven continued tapping commands unconcernedly into the screen on his arm. "Unless you want the quarks in her nuclei to fractize, I think she'd be best keeping it on. And if you don't put that on, yours will too. _But_, that's not my concern." He glanced up. "It's yours." He gave the Doctor a perfunctory smile and returned his attention to the hologram on his wrist.

"Just put it on, Doctor," said Xan impatiently, pushing him towards the changing column. "You've worn worse."

He surveyed her up and down. "It looks awful," he declared. "And what do you mean, I've worn worse?"

"Come on, all this fuss from the man with the monster scarf?"

The Doctor held up a finger. He opened his mouth to speak, held it open for a moment, and then said, "Did you just knock the scarf?"

"I'm not saying it's-"

"Ah, ah, ah." He put a finger over her lips. "I'm going to ask you again. Did you just insult the scarf?"

"Doctor?" said Xan carefully.

"Yes?"

"Put the damn thing on."

He sighed. "Fine. But no one's taking _my_ clothes for 'decontamination' or whatever you want to call it. They stay in my TARDIS. Got it?" He stepped back into the column.

"If you like." The Maven unclipped his screwdriver from his belt. "You'll need baryon infusions and a dose of neurotransmitters to prevent cerebral hypnoaccretion..."

The Doctor leaned halfway out of the stall. "Hypochondriac," he muttered unjustly, "Exactly how long do you expect us to be staying here?"

"Do you plan on leaving?" asked the Maven, reaching out and pulling Xan's left arm up to waist height. He pointed the violet screwdriver at the screen and flicked it on.

"Yes," protested the Doctor. "Obviously."

"That's not going to be easy. The closer you get to the beginning of the universe, the more everything plays havoc with your internal physics. So you'll definitely need the infusions and the neurotransmitters." He stopped, and looked at the screwdriver, then at Xan. "And then we'll have to give the girl a full genetovortical purge-"

"-why?" the Doctor demanded.

"She's a three-dimensional alien, that's why." The Maven almost sounded perplexed. "Human, I think? If she's been in your TARDIS for any length of time her DNA might already be starting to mutate..."

"My DNA is mutating?" asked Xan.

"No!" said the Doctor. "It isn't! It's your epigenome - it's adjusting your body to cope with rapid changes in pressure and temperature and gravity and magnetic field lines. That's all. You're just becoming more-" "-more like him, exactly. A human/Time Lord chimera. A violation of the Purity Act of-"

The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "That stupid, decadent law? Which clearly does not apply in this situation?"

"But she won't be human! She'll be a hybrid!"

"A child of Time. Maybe I like my humans with a little alien in them. Besides, genetic purges are dangerous and what's happening to her is perfectly natural, and without it she'll get headaches every time I go to a different place. Don't you dare try it." He slammed the door.

"Natural in this generation, but what about the next? How would you feel about a temporally sensitive, regenerative human running about the cosmos? Think about it. What if she conceives a child in your TARDIS?"

Xan wrinkled her nose. "What if I _don't?_" she said, mildly horrified.

"Like _that's_ ever happening," snorted the Doctor at the same time.

The Maven shook his head. "It's not my concern," he repeated. "Not my concern... Well, I won't testify in your defense."

"I won't be charged," the Doctor said darkly, his voice muffled by the column and the sound of clothes rustling. "Believe me." And Xan knew he _was_ right, and she knew the reason he could never explain to the Maven why.

"Then a genetic deirradiation, at least..." the Maven insisted.

At this point Xan chose to speak up. "I've already had one."

The Maven gave her a strange look, and the Doctor poked his head out of the column. As far as Xan could tell (head and shoulders), he wasn't wearing anything. He gave her a cheeky smile.

"Everyone had GDIs at Avalon University, where I worked," Xan explained, refusing to look over at the Doctor. "There was a cleansing treatment we all had to go through every so often."

"But not for tauons and huons, surely..."

"_Specifically_ for tauons and huons."

The Maven turned to the Doctor. "Is she serious?"

"A university's like an academic chapter," offered the man. "The year was 2021. Earth. And yeah, she's serious." He retreated into the changing stall again.

"What went on in that place was _not_ normal. It's a long story."

"I assume that means you won't tell it right now, then," said the Maven, with slight disappointment. "All right, Alexandra Russell, I'm finished." Switching off the purple screwdriver, he stepped away. "Keep the suit on at all times. It will read your body's signals and compensate for the effects of the singularity."

Xan scratched her leg through the stiff fabric. The foam pads on the inside were ticklish. "So we're actually in a singularity?" she asked. "We haven't just come out on the other side?"

The Maven didn't look her way, and seemed very uncomfortable.

"I'm not a hybrid," she said quietly. "And if I was, that's my own epigenetic business. I know what's been happening to me."

That brought the Maven's head up again. "You _know?_" he asked sharply.

"I've been monitoring the change. It's my area of expertise. The only reason I haven't got a PhD yet is that the corporation never released any of my work."

The Doctor cut in from the stall, "Or a Nobel Prize."

Xan smiled. "Oh, I wouldn't say that. But I do know what I'm talking about with epigenetics. And I know about the transformation. I've accepted it. And so should you."

Slowly, a hint of respect began to glow in the man's handsome features. "All right," he said, taking her hand. "I will."

"That's good," said Xan, with an admonishing look. "Because you'd have had to, anyway." She put her hands behind her back.

"Xaaan?" called the Doctor. There was much rustling.

"Uh-huh?"

"How do the buckles go around the chest?" he complained.

She smacked a palm to her forehead.

"How did you figure it out?" the Doctor insisted. "Does the large one go around the left or the right? And how does that wire thing fit in?"

"The red wire? That's not supposed to go out of the... you're unraveling the suit!"

"Then _you_ show me."

"I'm _not_ helping you put your suit on!" Xan said irritably. "Just figure it out!"

"But _Xaaaaaan_..."

"Oh god," Xan moaned. "I'm not doing it."

"_Pleaaaaase_?"

She ground her heel into the floor. "All right," she snapped. "All right! You better not be naked in there!"

"Only _half_," said the Doctor virtuously.

"_Which_ half?"

"Oh, just help me out, will you?"

Xan pulled the door of the column open a crack and slipped inside, feeling very slighted. The Doctor was waiting there, with the top half of the smart suit tangled around his chest. Ducking her head and covering her eyes, Xan said, "You've got the wires all out. They're not supposed to be like that."

"All right, how are they supposed to go?" He held up a loose sleeve. "I can't fit my arm in here, the pad's in the way..."

"You giant toddler," Xan muttered, untwisting the pad that was wrapped around the Doctor's bare armpit and flattening it out. "I can't _believe_ I'm doing this. Now put the wire back in the circuit... hold on. You've got it all wrong... what are you-?"

The Doctor suddenly pulled Xan up against him and put a hand over her mouth. "Your arm," he whispered. "Give me your left arm... good..." He began to pull the pads out of the fabric, which exposed the wires running up from the wrist. "Listen. If he wants us to wear these things, that's fine, but I'm not going to take any chances. These are hooked up to his TARDIS; I'm reconnecting them to mine, just in case. Now hold still."

"Did you have to do this half-naked?" she hissed angrily as the Doctor plucked out a group of wires.

"Seemed like a good excuse to me," said the Doctor, shrugging. "There. Now keep helping me put this hideous thing on. That's for cover."

Xan disentangled the buckles of the Doctor's suit. "Why are these things this complicated?" she whispered.

"Normal volume," the Doctor breathed back. "If it's not secret, talk normally."

Nodding, Xan said, trying to sound petulant, "Why are these things so _complicated?_"

"Oh, usually you got kitted up by a robot," said the Doctor, with a perfect level of nonchalance. He was actually a very good actor when he set his mind to it. "Did you see _Iron Man_?" He dropped a shoulder to let Xan loop the sleeve out from over his arm.

"Kinda like that, huh?" Xan asked. Then, quieter, she said, "Do you really think this Maven's a threat? He doesn't sound very... I mean, he's been pretty helpful. And he's clever, but not in a bad way. He doesn't seem like the type to-"

"Oh, you _like_ him, do you?" He had a villainous glint in his eye.

"No! For god's sake, Doctor, that's not the point!" Xan pulled a buckle tight and the Doctor make a small noise of pain.

"That pinches," he squeaked, eyes watering, "Get it off, get it off, ooh, ooh, ow..."

Xan let go of the cinch. "Sorry."

"It's not that I think he's a bad person. I can't tell yet. It's just... He's not like me, not at all. This TARDIS... it's not much newer than mine. This is a _Type 42 _science vessel we're in. Before perception filters were used, and you do realize that perception filters are not even close to exclusively Time Lord technology? This place is old. And if he knows about Type 45s, and judging from this outfit... Xan, his Gallifrey must about two million years earlier than mine!"

"Two _million_..."

"Yes! By the Time War, TARDIS models were already up to nine hundred and seventy! My TARDIS is a relic! Something out of a museum! And so is this Maven. You know what? The Purity Act was repealed _before I was born_."

Xan let out a slow breath. "That's..."

"Think about it, Xan, _really_ think about it. Does any of that matter here? In the Before? He could have been from anywhere! The Gallifreyan Standard Present doesn't exist here. We're outside of time, so what are we lords of now? Nothing! None of the rules apply. He could have ended up here two million years ago in my planet's time and it wouldn't make a difference. But now..."

A horrible idea hit Xan. "What happens if he comes back?" she whispered. "Can he get back to his time?"

The Doctor looked ill. "No. He couldn't. The Time Lock blocked the planet off from all sides. The instant he arrived here, he was outside the bubble. He can't ever go home."

Xan shook her head. "It's not right," she said softly.

"It.. had to be done." His voice cracked.

Bit by bit the meaning of this soaked into Xan's head. She looked up. "_You_ put up the Time Lock, didn't you?"

The Doctor couldn't bear to meet her eyes. There would be anguish, he thought, and disgust, and horror and disbelief and betrayal...

"That was why you survived. Because you were the only one outside the..."

But he looked down at her anyway, and there was something else in her gaze, something unbelievable. Sorrow, yes, but... respect.

"Not the only one," he said, very, very quietly. "Not anymore. There's the Maven now, and even the Master..."

"But he's not..."

"No," said the Doctor. "He's not."

Xan bowed her head.

"And there's you," the Doctor added.

Xan paused, and her hand twitched.

"Oh, and you put the shoulder pads on backwards," added the Doctor cheerfully. "Even I can see that."

"Whoops." She laughed and switched the pieces around, then tightened the final straps. "That looks about right now," she said, clasping her hands together. "Very dashing, I must say."

The Doctor must have though she was making fun of him, and on one level that might have been true, but the truth was, he could really look good in anything. And Xan actually liked the style of the smart suits. But then, her fashion sense was atrocious.

"And one more thing," Xan said, lowering her voice. "Do we tell him about me?"

After a moment, the Doctor shook his head, clipping his sonic screwdriver to the belt. "That's our secret," he said, grinning. On that, he picked up his clothes and dug around in the pockets, retrieving a cell phone, the psychic paper, a box of paper clips, a slinky, his glasses, and a stethoscope, which he managed to stuff in the utility belt of the smart suit. Then, defiantly, he pulled on his brown greatcoat over the technician's suit and tied the laces of his red Converse trainers.

Xan looked at this critically. "They don't exactly mix well," she said doubtfully.

"Oh, what do you know about fashion?"

"Er. Good point. Ignore me."

"All right, let's go out and learn what happened to this poor man that stranded him here." He held open the door, then peered out into the sterile room. "Hey," he said. "Wait. Where'd he go?"


	13. Bad Signs

**AN: Sorry about the delay. As usual, work is consuming all my time :( and I have to catch spare minutes whenever I can. But *coughs* getting a few reviews would definitely help me quicken things (hint, hint). ^_^ Oh, I'm incorrigible. **

They were the only two people in sight. The Maven had vanished. Xan and the Doctor exchanged glances. "Do you think we should stay inside the stall?" suggested Xan apprehensively. "Just in case?"

The Doctor straightened out the collar of his coat. "Oh, no. With this chance to poke about? Come on, let's look." He hopped down from the changing stall, with his clothes draped over his arm, and spun in a circle, then zeroed in on the lone console embedded in the wall. "Ah!" he said, with happy mischief. "Perfect!"

"Are you sure that's wise?" Xan said, who was fiddling with her arm-screen.

"Of course not, but it's not about wise, it's about clever. Everything's important, everything's meaningful, and what you're doing _isn't_ a very good idea."

She took her hand off her wrist quickly. "Are you sure it's _polite_, then?"

"I dunno. Probably not." The Doctor sniffed the panel in the center of controls. "Hm. Sodium hypochlorite... rubbing alcohol... pretty concentrated. That's a bit weird. Fellow washes his hands with strong stuff."

"That's not weird. It's precautionary."

"Yeah, but think about it," the Doctor began to say.

"What is it now, the _third_ time you've said that to me?"

"No, I mean it. Do think about it."

She did. "Antiseptic," she said. "Protects from germs. No, sorry, that's still a good thing."

"But why need it out here? We've got to have these super special suits to stop our cells from falling apart, and have germs got that?"

"No," she realized. "No, there shouldn't be any need for disinfectants anymore. A bacterium or virus should be the first to die, shouldn't it; they don't have much DNA at all. And I'm guessing that's fresh?"

"As a daisy. It's from when he touched it, just now. So the question is, why is he still so worried about germs?"

Leaning against the wall, Xan said thoughtfully, "Or if it _isn't_ germs, what _is_ he so worried about?"

That stewed in silence for a few seconds.

The Doctor rifled through the pile of his clothes and extracted his glasses from the folds of his shirt pocket. With these, and his sonic screwdriver he began to investigate the panel. "Well, we had better find out," he said, and pulled the cover off the controls.

Xan examined the electronic glove on her left hand, clenched her fist a bit. "It's funny," she said absently. "A bit strange that he should have spare clothing that fits us. Do you think there was a crew?"

Hovering over the panel intently, the Doctor shrugged. "Dunno." He reached into the hollowed area he'd created. "Well, if the Maven isn't bothering to come back... I just want to make sure that this TARDIS is all right. I'll hook him up with the old girl and they can coordinate power." He reached in deeper. "Where's... that.. cable...?"

"This TARDIS is a he?" Xan asked, smiling. "And yours is a she?"

The Doctor laughed. He knew what she was thinking. "That's a bit of a stretch. They haven't really got genders, I just call mine a she 'cause she acts like one. And..." He suddenly blinked, arm stuck all the way into the wall. "Xan?" he said quietly, reaching up for his glasses. "What was that you said before?"

"Before what?"

"Before I started talking about what I was doing. You said..."

"Oh, that," she remembered. "I just was wondering how the Maven had spare suits like these that aren't his size. I thought maybe there was... a crew..." She realized the problem as soon as she said it. "And if so..."

"Where did they...?"

But before he could finish, there was a jagged thrum of electricity the Doctor yelled in pain.

His whole body had become covered with a net of lightning that cut like a barbed wire snake make of pure fire. And he was writhing, twitching on the floor, with his arm still stuck inside the control panel. He was tugging at it, trying to pull it out, but it wouldn't break free.

In a panic Xan screamed something that probably didn't make sense grammatically, and that neither of them could hear over the Doctor's shouting. She grabbed hold of his arm to pull it lose, but the instant she touched the sparks there was white-hot pain, and she jerked back. "What's happening!" she shouted, swallowing back bile. "Is it stuck?"

"AAAGHHH yes, it's stuck, it's stuck..." the Doctor moaned. "There's something on my arm, it's holding it..." His eyes were shut tight, his face twisted up from the torture.

"WHAT? _What's_ on your arm?"

"I don't know, I don't know OOOHH feels like a wire or a cable AUUGGHH can't tell..." His back arched as he fought back another scream. "I can't... move... my arm..." He gasped for air. "Help..."

Xan tried to steel her mind to shut down all pain receptors, tackled the Doctor, and pulled as hard as she could. She'd expected the adrenaline of heroism to drown out the searing agony. It didn't. Really, _really_ didn't. But she wasn't going to let go, not _ever_, because... because...

... there _was_ some reason but she'd have to get back to that thought because it wasn't easy to think like this...

Without warning the pain stopped, and Xan's stomach did a dizzy flip-flop as she and the Doctor toppled backwards, skidding across the floor to crumple up at the base of the far wall.

Across the way, a long cable dangled out of the panel like a lolling tongue. The end was bare wire, and it sparked sporadically. All of a sudden it looked very sinister.

The Doctor rolled around to face Xan. His glasses were askew, and he was heaving air into his lungs with great gasps. "I swear by the White Guardian that thing was wrapped around my arm."

"How could it have gotten that tangled...?" Xan's head kept on humming like it was a great tuning fork.

"I didn't say that," the Doctor interrupted, inhaling sharply. "I said it wrapped around my arm." Holding out a hand and helping Xan to her feet, he added darkly, "There's a difference."

"Oh," she said, leaning on the Doctor's shoulder. "I see your point." After a moment, she suggested faintly, "Anti-intruder mechanism?"

"I hope it's that simple," said the Doctor. "Which means it probably isn't."

"Ah, of course," Xan agreed, "I rather thought that might be true with you."

The Doctor recognized this sentiment well. "They all notice that. Right after the bit about how it's bigger on the inside."

As she lifted her head to look up, amused, Xan let out a tiny hiss of pain. Belatedly, the Doctor remembered that humans weren't as resistant to electric shock. "Are you all right?" he asked, pulling her around and pressing his hand against the girl's neck. She winced, and the Doctor saw that a red mark was beginning to form over the skin. "Looks like a flash burn," he said. "I think the suits took the worst part, but we're lucky we've still got hair on our heads. And I like my hair. So that's good." He examined her neck again. "And _that's_ not. Cold water... something cold..." He cast about the room for the sonic screwdriver in the hope that it hadn't been fried.

"Why aren't _you_...?" Xan started to ask.

"Ah, Time Lord, remember?" He pointed at himself, then resumed his search, while steering clear of the gutted panel. "I've taken hits that would kill a man without getting a scratch on me. Oh, there we are." He held up the sonic screwdriver. "Let's see if you're still working, shall we?"

"Lucky little lighting rod," Xan said enviously. "You and your alien physiology."

"Well, it still hurts."

"Not afterwards, though." She gingerly felt her neck, and then grimaced. "I think afterwards is the unpleasant part."

The Doctor returned and indicated for her to expose her neck to his attentions. "Well, not if I'm around," he said cheerfully, holding up the sonic.

As the light of the screwdriver shone on Xan's skin, the discoloration began to fade. "That feels cold," she suddenly blurted out, sucking air through her teeth and starting to laugh. "It feels like you dropped ice water down my collar... stopitstopit..."

"That's the whole point, Xan. Just hold still, I'm almost done... All right, you're good." He stepped back, scanned the room, and cocked his head. "Let's go find our host, shall we? Perhaps we'd better make sure that we're still welcome."

A door opened, and the two figures, clothed in what really did look like high-tech onesies, stepped cautiously out into the hallway beyond.

"You don't trust him," said Xan, quickly glancing behind her. "Oh, this is _new_... Why do the hallways all look the same?" Even the massive nuts in the wall were still there, although a couple of them had screens inside the inner circle. Xan didn't dare touch them. "It's just like your TARDIS, isn't it?"

"No," the Doctor corrected, "it's _nothing_ like my TARDIS." He didn't explain why this was. His eyes flicked from side to side as they walked. "And no, I don't trust him. I don't know why you do."

"I _don't_," said Xan. "I trust you. If you don't think he's trustworthy, neither do I." She peeked around a corner, eyes wide open to catch sight of any possible danger. "You're the expert."

"Mm. Good point... You ought to take my fashion advice, too," the Doctor said critically, looking at her smart suit - a rather misleading name, he felt.

"Okay. Scarf, then?"

"Scarves are fine," he insisted. "They're _hip_. And did I mention celery? Excellent restorative, that. Adds a nice touch of green on the lapel."

Xan rolled her eyes. "For an outfit or a salad?"

"Why not a salad?"

"Because I wouldn't know where to put the tomatoes. So how come scarves are cool?"

He shook his head. "Not cool. _Hip_. They're absolutely not the same. The scarf is not cool. The scarf is hip."

"How?"

Though stumped for a moment, he rallied magnificently. "Hip means _old_. Vintage. Right, that's it. Like used clothes and... Model Ts and... stuff. The older it is, the hipper it is."

"You _sure_ that's what it is?"

"Positive. Like, er, Ozti the Iceman. He's a really hip... _bro_." The last word seemed to dribble out. "Groovy, yo."

Xan's face was blank, but twitching. Something bottled in was about to explode. "Well... maybe wrinkly? Sort of leathery?"

"Ex-_actly_," said the Doctor happily. "_Leather_."

Xan silently overflowed.

"Leather equals hip," he went on in a satisfied way. "Ozti the Hipster... Are you all right, Xan?"

"Yes," she coughed, thumping her breastbone. "Better now."

It wasn't so much that the halls looked like those of the Doctor's TARDIS. It was something else. Not out of the same mold, but off a similar drawing-board. The light was a different color, darker, but had the same marine effect. The noise in the background was alike, but maybe in a another key. A Type 42 TARDIS... almost as old as the Doctor's, but it was a different model, and so it must have had something that distinguished it. A TARDIS wasn't a web browser or a smartphone; it was alive, and so the distinctions would not only be in the technology, but intrinsic to the very organism... _It's nothing like my TARDIS_...

"Oh, don't stop there! It's the best part."

Xan jumped. "Who, me?" she asked, flustered. "What? Why...?"

"_Thinking_," said the Doctor, relishing the word. "You were doing so _well_. It's not just different technology, it's another kind of creature... you're so _creative_ when you explain things."

She pulled herself together, badly. "How," Xan said, after a few false starts, "could you _possibly_ know what I'm thinking about?"

He laughed. "I know you." Seeing this wasn't going to be enough, he pointed up and said, "You've been looking at the ceiling more often, and I know that's where the sound comes from, so you're listening to the sound. And the sound's not from the machinery, it's from the organism, so that's what you've been thinking about. And since I told you it wasn't anything like my TARDIS..."

"Stop it," Xan interrupted, uncomfortable. "Stop doing that."

The Doctor was slightly miffed. "Well, someone's a bit _touchy_ today..."

"I suppose I _am_ that predictable," she said to herself gloomily, hunching her shoulders and pulling her head down, like a turtle retreating into its shell. "It's creepy, that's all. Unnerving." "Why?" "It's like the moment in a dream when you realize that you're not wearing anything, and you've been naked the whole time."

"Oh, so you're worried I've been reading your mind this whole time... so what does that say about your thoughts?"

"That they're mine, that's all. I don't want to have to cover them up, too."

"Maybe you don't have to cover anything up."

"What about you, then? Why do you?"

His eyes grew sad, and he seemed to be about to speak, but instead of responding, the Doctor froze. Then he flung out an arm to stop Xan from going any further, and held a frantic finger up to his lips. "_In there_," he whispered, and put a hand on the wall where the outline of a door could be seen.

Xan quickly ran through possible strategies. "You go in and distract him," she whispered back, "and I'll wait out here. Get him to come out and I'll knock him out."

"Can you really do that?" the Doctor asked, surprised.

"Um... I was going to try to find out right now."

The Doctor sighed. "Well, that's not going to work."

"No," said Xan dejectedly. "I know."

"Why don't you lure him out and I'll sneak in and get control of his TARDIS..."

"Yeah, but lure him out how?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Seduce him or something."

Xan gave the Doctor a long look.

"Yeah, that's not going to work," he said hastily. "Plan A?"

"Plan A," she agreed, flexing her muscles. "Knock him out. Ready?"

The Doctor nodded, and counted down under his breath. Then he reached out, pushed the door open, and dove inside.

**AN: I thought it was funny how both Xan and the Doctor have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to style. I imagined Xan as the type of person to have played D&D as a kid, or some sci-fi equivalent, and adore really badassy arcane warrior outfits when all the other girls are drooling over Disney princess gowns. Not that there's anything wrong with gowns, mind you, but how much do they add to hitpoints? Could you fight a level 72 Lesser Demon in one? And so on. You know. _That_ kind of girl.**


	14. Body Language

**AN: This first part is mostly directed to secooper87, because you mentioned the narrative switch in one of the earlier chapters and wondered if that was intentional. But it applies to everyone else, too. One of the things you'll notice about this chapter is the way I move in and out of the characters' minds, in varying degrees of closeness. Basically, I decided to make it intentional. :) **

**I did a few more things in this chapter differently in terms of how I show shifting emotions (the hint's in the title of the chapter), and that was intentional as well. Feel free to analyze. And as always, tell me what you think of the plot, the writing, the OCs (two of 'em, now!), what you think might happen, or whatever else strikes your fancy. Enjoy the chapter!**

The Doctor found himself looking down from a ledge at the console room of the Maven's TARDIS, where the theme was chrome. He felt exactly like he'd stepped into the middle of an Apple product. The smooth, reflective console was all fluorescent touch-screen buttons - to the Doctor's mild horror, not a switch or a lever or any other kind of protrusion could be found. Where the tall blue column was in the Type 40, here there was simply light: insubstantial, glowing fibrils of energy.

The Doctor saw the figure of the Maven first through this screen. Then the other Time Lord shifted and came into full view. Still watching the smooth surface of his console, the Maven said, "If you would, Doctor, an alpha resistor from the supply cabinet to your right? The reduction coils are collecting static again."

Warily, the Doctor pulled back a panel to reveal what seemed to be an ordinary filing cabinet. He leafed through the folders and saw that all of them were filled with thin, transparent, cel sheets of magnonic circuit boards. The idea of Time Lords (besides himself) using technology you could actually _see_ was so foreign.

He held up a leaf of electronics. "Static, you said?"

The Maven consulted the screen on his arm. "Static. Exactly. In fact, there was a discharge not too long ago in the..." he blinked. "In the decontamination room..." The Maven pivoted sharply. "You didn't notice anything, did you?"

Like a chess player reaching for a piece, the Doctor put his hand out for the door and carefully pushed it open. "Xan?" he called.

"Yeah?"

Very cautiously, he beckoned to the girl. "Come on," the Doctor said. "Never mind the plan. You'll miss everything."

Xan had been nervously waiting outside, flattened against the wall. Carefully she took a survey of the Doctor's body language. He had a very distinct way of showing his emotions, one you had to learn. And it was definitely non-human. It was like his mouth spoke English (as she heard it), but the rest of him spoke Doctor, and if you couldn't learn how to read Doctor then you were probably going to die.

Right now his shoulders were back but his head was tilted slightly down, and that mean he was uneasy. You could almost see the tension in his throat. And he was thinking in the present, not following through the steps of an already-laid-out plan, because of the way his gaze stayed on things longer than normal. Every time he moved his eyes there was a pause where you could imagine a little progress bar filling in and then, _scan complete_.

It was like watching the mood of a horse or a wolf or a cat, instead of a creature that wore clothes and stood upright and talked. And Xan began to realize how it was that the Doctor could read her so easily. She was human and he was Time Lord, and they couldn't help but notice everything that was different about the two. And so they instinctively paid more attention to what the other did, because they were always on the verge of a miscommunication. They unnerved each other.

But why was it that the Doctor was unnerved by the Maven more than he was by Xan? Because she knew that was true; she could tell. Even with Galag the Doctor hadn't been this... distant.

The Doctor stepped down the rungs of the short ladder from the ledge as Xan walked into the console room. "The alpha resistor," he said, handing the Maven the sheet. "Xan, come on down."

Xan was admiring the design of the console room, and no doubt working it into some theory about the TARDIS. "I _like_ this," she said in a friendly way, smoothly sliding down the ladder's handrails and hopping to the floor. "It's so different... is that a circuit board? Floppy circuit board?"

"Magnonic graphene polymer," explained the Doctor instinctively. "Call it a floppy disc if you like. Semiconductive film. Stack them up and you have a computer." He pointed at the Maven, who had taken the little sheet and pasted it over the surface of the console like it was papier-mâché. It glowed, and then became seamless screen once again. The film had simply melted into the console.

Xan's eyes lit up. "I get it!" she said happily. "Clever idea. I read about that back on Earth. They were thinking about using that, but they went with spintronics instead..."

"Did they really?" asked the Maven, interested. "I didn't know humans had such technology."

"Oh, they don't. I mean, they might have had. We might have had. They always... I mean, _we_ always have so many ideas, but money doesn't always back progress. Or they go with some other idea... sometimes I think we found the solution to our problems a long time ago and forgot it because it didn't sell."

"I've never... I've never been to Earth," admitted the Maven. "They said if you wanted to travel, get used to meeting aliens on planets like your own, and then go to the wilder ones. And only if you can stomach that should you ever go to Earth."

Every so often, under the right circumstances, Xan allowed herself to enjoy company. Her ears went way up as she grinned proudly. "Do they really say that?"

"Well, they told me."

"I love it!" she laughed. "Ought to put that on a fridge magnet or something, right Doctor? Earth: for experienced travelers only."

The Doctor sighed. So much for caution. Xan would befriend anyone who showed her something new. It was the archeologist in her. To her, if you were from any period time other than the present (in fact, the farther from the present you were, the more so this was), you were of _incredible_ value, and what you knew should be preserved at all costs. A Time Lord from an older version of Gallifrey? A veritable artifact! Didn't matter if you were nice or not, you were a specimen to be cherished. The Doctor knew that his friend would be pleased as punch to get a chance at _archeologizing_ his species, and he did his best to protect the memory of Gallifrey from terrible things like Xan Russell. But he couldn't really hold her off forever.

Sometimes he felt (with a hint of anger) like that was the only reason why she bothered with him at all...

"Doctor?" Xan asked quietly.

He jumped and then located where her voice was coming from. "I... I... Oh, sorry. Mind got floating off somewhere. What was it, again..?"

"No, I hadn't said anything. I just thought... for a second..." The Doctor could tell that she nearly hadn't said anything. Her voice always lilted when she was unsure of herself, and it was doing that now. "You looked like something upset you, that's all."

The Doctor looked down. "No, not really."

"It just seemed like..." The way shadows filled his eyes, and for once his eyebrows met on the same axis. "You okay?" He saw how she'd moved, angled her body just a bit so that she was coming closer to facing the same way as him. It was a little thing, but it had a lot of meaning, when you thought about it the right way. "Yeah," he said. "I'm okay."

"Doctor," interrupted the Maven, as if slightly displeased. "Your coat..."

Startled by the change of topic, the Doctor drew back. "What's wrong with the coat?"

"I didn't think you'd keep it on... Are you sure it's a good idea...?" There was a bizarre level of discomfort in the Maven's voice.

"What? Why not? It's mine, and I keep stuff in it. Keeps me warm. Janis Joplin gave it to me... not that you'd know who-"

"And the shoes-"

"Oi!" said the Doctor sharply. "Not my shoes. That's going too far."

"You couldn't have cleaned them, first?" said the Maven, and it sounded as though he'd spoken without thinking.

Xan and the Doctor turned and looked at each other.

"Well, I understand not wanting your floors dirty, but still..."

"Unimportant," said the Maven quickly. "Don't worry about it. I'm not accustomed to visitors, you see. I imagine I've become a bit eccentric from all this time out here alone. I'm forgetting myself... sit down, please. Make yourselves comfortable."

"About that, yes," said the Doctor, perching on the arm of the chair Xan chose. "How long _have_ you been here?"

The Maven clasped his hands together and looked at the ceiling. "Two hundred and forty-eight point seven days," he answered unemotionally, then looked at the Doctor. "Are you impressed? Frightened, perhaps?"

"All that time and you haven't found a way out... yes, I'd say a little frightened. But then, I spent a year as a small wrinkly creature in a cage so I'm not too impressed."

"When did you...?" Xan began, incredulous.

"Later," he murmured.

"Promise?"

He thought about it. "No," he decided, and readdressed the Maven. "But believe me, it wasn't anything like therapeutic."

"And how long have you been here, Doctor, in your TARDIS?"

"An hour," he said frankly. "At most. And I don't want it to be much longer than that, honestly. I mean, there's a lovely view, but in terms of the amenities of civilization I'd say it comes in about... one star? I mean, how do you handle the plumbing? Can't get rid of it, in case that starts an expansion... and wouldn't that be awful? A whole universe created from- oh, that's bloomin' _embarrassing_, is what it is."

"Ah, yes, I see where that might be distasteful. Well, it's lucky that I've got plenty of space in the TARDIS left for all that."

"I wouldn't think that a TARDIS could exist that long in a self-contained environment, feeding back on itself the whole time..."

"It doesn't, normally."

Hearing this, the Doctor shifted, and Xan knew that the next question he asked was going to be far more important than any of the others. "So why does it now?"

"Nothing dramatic. What else would you expect? Reusing materials, shutting off unnecessary functions..." "And that can create a system that's entirely closed, within your TARDIS, for all of two hundred and forty-eight point seven days? Nothing in or out?"

Aloof, the Maven answered, "I would think that should be self-evident."

The Doctor half-raised his hand like he was expecting to be called on. "Right, but there's just one little thing that's bothering me there, about that. Because if nothing enters and nothing leaves your TARDIS - no matter, no energy, no information - then how did you detect _us_?" The question was posed very innocently, but Xan, tracking the conversation closely, had a feeling that it wasn't as open-ended as it seemed at first. It forced you into doubling back on your words. Xan was especially competent at answering questions, and this one would have stumped her. She was curious to see how the Maven would respond.

The tall man shut his eyes and briefly pressed his hand to his forehead. It looked like he was thinking, but really it hadn't been a difficult question, in that it had an answer that you either knew or didn't. It looked like he was struggling for words, in a deliberate, refined way, but that shouldn't have to be the case. And it was odd, but it also looked like discomfort.

"It's not... _entirely_..." the Maven tried to say, and then he halted. Suddenly his voice changed, becoming much colder and without variation. "All matter from the universe interacts with itself. Nothing from within the Before that does not exist beyond it can come in contact with the impure states of existence."

From the sound of it, he hadn't been breathing during that entire sentence, because it ended with a tiny gasp. The Maven exuded relief, as though what he'd done had been physically taxing. "Except on command," he qualified, as a bit of color and emotion returned to his features. "Otherwise, what would be the point of being here? But-" He leapt to his feet. "I'm getting to far ahead of myself. Please, Doctor, before we go any further, tell me what brought you here. I _love_ a good story."

Did the man _never_ stay in one mood? Right now he was so eager and friendly, and seconds earlier he was the opposite. Was that just how Time Lords were? Xan had to suppose so.

The Doctor knew better. "Are you sure that everything's...?"

Lifting his head sharply, the Maven said, "Resonance disrupting cortical connectivity, suppressing neurotransmitters-" He took a breath. "Nothing serious; it comes and goes."

"I thought the suits protected-" Xan began.

The Maven ran his fingers through his dark curls. "For you they should," he told her, and as he said this a mask came over his features, and he didn't meet her gaze. "But I've been here eight months and... I've always been more susceptible to..."

An awkward pause.

_Guilt_, Xan thought instantly. _That's guilt right there... he's trying to conceal it, not just from us but from himself... guilt over something inevitable, something that he thinks is going to happen... to _us_..._ "How we got here," she said through her thoughts. "He asked about..."

"Well, it wasn't that complicated," the Doctor said dismissively. "Went through an old man's backyard after a ball, old man doesn't like it, so he tries to blow up my time machine and we end up before the Big Bang. That old story."

"Don't confuse him," Xan chided. "If you won't tell it right, let me."

"Well, go ahead then, if you're such an expert."

"All right, I will, then. So, we were on our way to... what was it, again? A concert? Something dull like that..."

"I thought you wanted to go," the Doctor cut in, looking hurt. "I _asked_ you."

Xan rolled her eyes. "I didn't think we were going for the _music_," she said, as if this was plain as day to anyone in their right mind. "What would be the point of that?"

The Doctor slid off the arm of the chair and leaned against the railing behind it instead. "I dunno," he finally mumbled. "Listen to music. Eat food, dance, whatever. Maybe just enjoy each other's company for once..."

"For _once?_ We live together, don't we?"

For a moment the Doctor didn't look like he would speak, then he waved a hand and said, "Well, you got what you wanted, didn't you? Nothing _dull_ about any of this."

Xan had the vague feeling that she'd said something wrong, perhaps rude. "What I meant was, being at a concert isn't really that-" "_Forget it_," the Doctor said fiercely, picking at a lump of threads on his coat. "It's not important."

While she hated to let anything go, Xan also loathed this kind of roundabout, incoherent argument where no one seemed to have a position to defend, or a point to make. People just scowled at one another and disagreed over arbitrary statements. Which was entirely boring. If Xan was going to argue, she wanted to be able to win. So instead she shrugged and resumed the short tale.

Xan was a good storyteller. She was witty, had a talent for suspense and description, and made the Doctor look a lot more heroic than he'd actually been. She told about Galag, about the brief battle, and falling through the singularity, and how it had felt to rematerialize on the other side.

At the end of it all the Maven laughed out loud, having found black humor in some bit of irony only he at that moment understood. "And that's how you ended up here," he exclaimed, "beyond the very edge of reality? Pure accident? It all makes so much sense now! The stars align and a time traveler's ship is amateurishly sabotaged, and the most improbable event in creation comes to pass! Oh, that I have lived so long as to see this!" He was shaking with real mirth but his smile seemed false. "That you would venture here by dint of simple, rotten luck..."

"So then you..." Without warning the Doctor, who had been leaning back on the railing, snapped ramrod straight, hand darting down to his hip where the sonic screwdriver was clipped. "_No_," he said in disbelief. "I'd heard _rumors_ of this, a kind of banishment for the most dangerous type of... but that wasn't ever proven... They were just conspiracies..."

"What?" Xan whispered. "You mean...?"

"No!" exclaimed the Maven, still laughing. "Oh, I heard those rumors too but... you misunderstand me! You don't realize, do you? Doctor, _Doctor_, you're more than that! Setting up perception filters on a Type 40, irritating Taglosian royalty, having laws made banning you! I thought you'd _know_ better. And you, Alexandra Russell, you're _human_. Surely your kind, of all species, the most indomitable, the most irrepressibly curious..."

A tiny light flicked on in her mind.

"You still don't... Oh, I didn't land in the Before by _accident_, like you... I wasn't _forced_ here, as punishment!" The Maven's clear, sparkling eyes went wide. "You don't understand, Doctor, I _wanted _to come here, to the beginning of everything, where no one has ever gone before. I came here... by _choice!_"


	15. Yarentarnauturon

**AN: This chapter is a little shorter than the others in terms of words, but I think it reads slower than the rest. You can't really skim this chapter and get the full impact, so this one may take up some more time. I enjoyed writing it, so I hope people will find it interesting, but it's not like your typical fanfiction. I was practicing writing in a different style, where I don't have to account for every second of time passing, like it was a screenplay. Also it doesn't focus so much on the characters of Doctor Who as on Gallifrey itself, and on the Maven, who I decided to make into a more fleshed out character. Oh, and I changed a detail from before: the Maven's time isn't two _thousand_ years earlier than the Doctor's, it's two _million_ years (Time Lords were around for a _very_ long time). I thought that was more dramatic a difference. So, picking up from where the last chapter left off...**

And so the Maven told his story.

He wasn't always called the Maven, and he hadn't always been a full Time Lord. His designation had been Yarentarnauturon, known as Yaren, and his title would almost definitely be Castellan. When he was very young, his parents had decided that his highest calling would be as head of the Chancellory Guard, which to the Maven's (or, Yarens's) young ears sounded as romantic as being a plumber. No matter how much power that meant, there was the undeniable fact that in the middle of a millennium of especially stagnant peace, the job would be nothing but standing, sitting, or sleeping, and in two out of the three listening to the drone of senators and Councilors, one of whom was his mother. This sounded akin to torture.

If he tried for the position, it would almost certainly be given to him within a few centuries. His parents were both quite important, and with his elder brother already in his second regeneration and steadily rising through the layers of bureaucracy, everyone except Yaren himself was very eager for him to enter politics. Also, as Castellan, some of the shortcomings could be overlooked. Yaren was not charismatic; he had a tendency to be blunt and dismissive. He couldn't sway the opinions of a crowd, nor could he negotiate successful treaties, nor could he find in himself the ability to scheme and connive and pander to more powerful parties. He wasn't suited for power, and while he might have enjoyed being an underling with paperwork and spare time, with his background that would be disgraceful.

So the first part of his life was taken up by being a guard, shuffled from one moon to a more important other as the inevitable promotions came rolling in. He never had to work a day in his life, but he did anyway, because he was always in the fear that the people one guarded against would catch him unawares. He read books, and in books that happened quite a bit. The more important he became, the greater the statistical probability of his being targeted as a victim by real people, and the less important he was the higher chance of dying at the hands of a predictable narrative.

Over the course of one hundred and seventy years, Yarentarnautuon died for the first time, in the somewhat dull manner of old age. A middle-aged child, he lost touch with the events on the home planet, and so when he was assigned on a special mission to protect an individual known as the Maven he thought it was just another dull job. He didn't realize that he was being tasked to one of the most radical scientific thinkers of the century.

The old Maven was full of vim and vigor and was always changing his mind at the last minute. No one could ever predict what he would decide to do next until right before he did it, so most of the people around him would be roped into impromptu service in an area they had never worked in before. Accountants would be convinced to take care of exotic beasts, stuffy inspectors from the university would be bribed to paint an entire hall with glowing silver goo, janitors would become copilots of Type 38 time machines. It was all very scandalous and so of course the rebellious Prydonian students loved it.

After a time, so did Guard Yaren. He found that fixing TARDISes and running algorithms and poring over holobooks, tomes so old the images still had scanlines, from the archives of the Prydonian chapter came as naturally to him as breathing, while guarding did not. It was like a second childhood, but he'd never had a first. Yaren died twice more in odd laboratory accidents (and he'd never enjoyed dying more) over the course of thirty or so years, and was younger and cleverer and more intense each time. He'd always been a slightly single-focus individual, and now he was coming nearer and nearer to being a full-fledged savant.

Of all of them, the most ambitious project the old Maven had conceived of was to observe the creation of the universe. Time Lords could go anywhere and anywhen except for one place: the beginning. They had grown so used to power that they believed that they knew everything there was worth knowing anyway, and it would be a waste to send ships on a dangerous mission just to see everything go bang. And the risk of altering timelines would be far too great. Time Lords were very set in their ways, something that didn't change much in two million years.

It didn't matter what people thought. The old Maven couldn't stand the thought of not knowing. Part of him must have believed that if he saw the beginning, he might find meaning in the universe at last. He told very few about his dream, and among those few was Yarentarnauturon, who to the Maven was not the son of a Councilor or a faceless guard but simply one of the best technicians he'd ever met. And Yaren, in secret, had an even grander vision, one that he began to devote all of his time to: to go beyond the beginning itself, into the realm of mystery.

But then the promotion came. Yaren had almost forgotten he was a guard. He was Technician Yaren now, Someone-Grab-Me-A-Spanner Yaren, Are-There-Any-Volunteers Yaren, a finder, a fixer, a doer. But Gallifrey and the Powers That Be didn't need any of those Yarens, it wanted Castellan Yarentarnauturon, and no matter how much he dragged his feet and made a fuss, or hid in the catacombs for months without food or water, or pretended to be a Slitheen (with the recruited help of several bored art students), he was going to become that Yaren whether he liked it or not.

Guard Yaren became Chancellory Guard Yaren, and most of his day involved standing around listening to pontification and politics and his mother, who pretended not be related to the wide-eyed, bohemian youth who was always pilfering stasers to use the shot as fuel for experiments. For nothing, not even the High Council of Gallifrey, could stop him from trying to find out what came before the universe and how to get there. Yaren set up model after model to find out how a TARDIS could pass through the singularity without being crushed, and for a time the Chancellory Guard found a mysterious lack of dimensionally transcendent storage crates. He dug into the oldest records available to find out what to expect, and when that yielded nothing, he decided to do what not even the old Maven had thought to do: consult another species. And in this way the Maven found Earth.

Hawking, Hartle, Thorne, Turok, Steinhardt, Loren, Piersval, Heka-13, eOS; from theoretical physicists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries all the way to the famous sentient computers and handlers of the forty-second. Earth and humanity had no limit to its imagination. Ideas and theories, of all shape and size, most ridiculous and some genius, but a good number of them possible. Using them, Yaren began to invent new technologies specified for each scenario, fuels that would create self-sustaining systems, whatever was necessary.

Only ten years after he was promoted out of paradise, Yaren returned to the Prydonian academy with what felt like a lifetime's worth of research. He envisioned a return to the world of busy work and welding guns and books, because surely with the Maven's support he could escape from his job as a guard and become spanner-fetching Yaren once again.

What he found was a smallish statue and a plaque that said that the Maven had died three years ago, really died, when his TARDIS was destroyed by a rogue Cybership in the middle of the Opheron Nebula. It was rumored that the ship had been planted there by the Council to stop the Maven from corrupting their youth.

Whether this was true or not, Yaren couldn't stand the thought of returning to the Capitol. So he disowned his parents, induced regeneration, and started life anew, in the collegiate system. He was chosen by the Arcalian chapter, and after quietly receiving perfect scores on every test in physics and engineering and temporal mechanics, and failing every one in social studies and law, he graduated a Time Lord and took the title of the by-now-forgotten scholar who turned his life around. Yarentarnauturon, aristocrat and guard, became the Maven reborn.

Soon after that, he had possession of a Type 42 TARDIS, and with that final piece in place, the Maven left Gallifrey and the universe behind. In about eight Earth months, he would find that his instruments were picking up signs of another vessel drifting through the Before.


	16. Socializing

**AN: Wow. Bogged down with work... barely eked out this chapter. So to readers who are very interested to find out what happens, I have to say that the more feedback I get on the story - the more detailed reviews, in other words - the more I'll be able to put up and the faster I'll do it. It really helps to hear what people are thinking of the story. So :) review. I really _do_ like this story, out of all the others I've written, so I want it to be completed, and any encouragement helps. **

"And this fabric here, seven months' worth of experimentation on the semifluidity of the film. I took the basic design from a subcellular heliobuffer and worked up from there."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow and held the swatch in front of the light of his screwdriver, which was set on silent. "So it can block any size particle without having to be that dense? Okay, got that. Little forcefield effect there, between the warp and woof-"

"Come again?" Xan took two or three giant steps back and inserted herself into the conversation. "Warp and what?"

"It's a weaving thing, Xan. I wouldn't expect you to be the needlepoint type. On a loom, warp goes one way, woof goes the other."

"Not making those names up?" she said doubtfully.

"Nope."

"Well, that's good to know..." Xan mentally inserted this into her memory bank. "Huh. Sewing. Who'd have thought?"

She returned to her chair, and her book, which had (up until then) belonged to the Maven. It wasn't that he'd given it to her, but rather that there was a law of sorts, that if Xan was holding a book, it belonged to her. The way that happened was that Xan _acted_ as if this were a rule, so it became one.

It was a very interesting task she'd created for herself, but she kept on being distracted by the other interesting things going on around her, which was very annoying.

Early on, Xan had found that Gallifreyan didn't run through the translator matrix, and decided that she would make sure it wouldn't make a difference. So now, she had set herself to cataloguing the evolution of the language over the few million years that had passed between the Maven's time and the Doctor's, looking at symbol morphology and syntax changes, and she was mildly surprised to see that there was very little change. So in making any extrapolation backwards, she would either have to be content to be wildly imprecise, or she would need information from even earlier...

In a word, Xan was archeologizing. It was partly as refuge. She had a strange feeling that the Doctor was cross with her, and so she was doing everything humanly possible to avoid him - Xan never did anything by halves.

It looked like the Maven didn't, either. The Doctor listened with polite disbelief as he was shown the care and expertise with which the explorer had prepared for his expedition. But there was always the strange feeling of knowing more than someone else, cropping up in odd places like an alien abductee.

"Look at where we are," he was arguing. "You've been out here for a long enough time to get an idea of what those color-crazy curlicues out there are. That's not normal matter. It's not _particles_. It's something else, something really, really small projecting an image into our heads. Scans don't show anything out there. Cameras don't pick it up-"

For the tiniest moment, doubt flitted across the Maven's pale, precise visage. "Doctor, I assure you that I have run the most precise controlled experiments on the samples from-"

And then he stopped, mid-sentence.

Xan paused in the middle of sketching a symbol into her notebook, and while she didn't turn her head, her eyes flicked over to where the Doctor and the Maven were standing. The Doctor leaned forward concernedly, about to ask something, but he missed his chance.

Within nanoseconds the Maven had composed himself. "Sorry," he said in a slightly chillier tone, barely breaking tempo. "I've got to take measurements on the hour, and we've spent too much time chatting. Don't leave, I'll be right back." And without even a nod or a parting word, he vanished through the door, with all the social grace as if he was the only one in the room.

"Don't _leave_, he says," Xan parroted, sliding off her chair. "_Do_ stay a while in my humble gingerbread abode, sweet children... Do you get the feeling he's not telling us something?" She did a smart little about-face and came down at the Doctor's side, looking to him automatically for support, until she remembered about avoiding him. "Oh, sorry," she amended. "I forgot about that, you being mad at me. I'll leave you alone." With a sheepish shrug, she flopped back down onto the shiny, squeaky sofa and reached for the book.

The Doctor nodded distractedly, then frowned and spun around. "Xan, I never said I was angry with you."

"People usually don't," she pointed out in a conciliatory way. "Mostly it's all guesswork. Did I misjudge anything?"

He sat down next to her and peeked over her shoulder at the book. "Ooh. Things and stuff. Love that."

"You're breathing down my neck," Xan said tonelessly. "Did you know?"

"You'll never forget that, will you?" the Doctor sighed.

"No. I don't think so."

He twisted in his seat and made a face. "See, you're _angry_ with me. Why are _you_ mad at _me_, now?"

"Could be nothing," said Xan unemotionally. "Perhaps I'm picking up on something external."

"Something... look, I wasn't mad at you! Really!"

"Oh, right. Silly me... Of course you wouldn't be angry... since there wasn't anything to be angry _about_." This was said in a very pointed manner. Xan turned a page, and then in an apparent non sequitur (although it wasn't one, at all), said, "I _hate_ things like that. When people argue, and no one bothers to mention what it's _about_."

"Well, I do too," the Doctor agreed. "Absolute rubbish, that is. Can't stand a minute of it."

Xan thought that perhaps this was directed at her. So she pulled up her legs and said into her kneecaps, "I never meant what you _thought_ I meant, you know."

"No, no, of course not..." He leaned back and stared at the fabric patch. "Look at that... clever little forcefieldy... shame it never-"

"You thought I was saying that just spending time with you without any adventure stuff was boring, but that's _not_ what I meant, not _really_..." She seemed to be talking to herself, but she had an air of slow panic. Words seemed to be coming out on their own.

"... never could work..."

"Because what I was _really_ saying was that going to some place like a concert really seems more like _avoiding_ one another because it's all loud and crowded, and you're watching someone _else_ do something interesting and you don't really interact much, like talking or things, and I think it's a lot nicer when we can just sort of talk without having to be _doing_ anything like as an excuse, because I like just talking... with you..."

A slight pause, and then Xan and the Doctor turned to each other at the same time. "_What_ was that you said?"

Xan shook herself and stood up. "Nothing, nothing. Wasn't important. You said... it couldn't..."

And as she spoke, the Doctor was saying, "Just, go through that again, all right? About how you liked... talking with me?"

"Said it couldn't work!" Xan finished, snapping her fingers and pointing at the Doctor. "Fabric couldn't work, but why _can't_ it work? Why not?"

The Doctor stood, too, rubbing his mouth and trying to remember why he'd said that. "Well, it just couldn't. You could never know how to repel whatever's outside because you'd have to-"

"But it _does_ work, doesn't it? I mean, if it doesn't, then it _hasn't_ been, and if it hasn't been, then it doesn't _need_ to, because nothing's happened to the Maven..."

"- have to have something to test it on..."

Xan shook her head. "No, but he _does_."

"Wait..." said the Doctor. "What. Was. That?"

"He said he had samples..."

The Doctor grabbed Xan's shoulders. "_He said he had samples..._" he repeated. "The Maven has samples of... So that means..."

"... _means_...?" Xan encouraged. "What does it mean?"

The Doctor slowly leaned back. "... I have no idea."

The world stopped holding its breath, and instead let it out in an exasperated _hrrumph!_ Xan sucked on her lower lip. "Okay," she considered. "Well, I'd ask him, but he's _vanished_ again. He _does_ like to do that, doesn't he?"

"Whenever we're _distracted_," the Doctor agreed. "Got to stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Well. You know. _Socializing_."

Xan winced. "Was that what we were doing?"

Looking equally repulsed, the Doctor straightened his coat and turned to the door. "I think it could have been, yes. Should we wait for him?"

Sitting back down, Xan tried to make herself comfortable. "Do we ever?" The Doctor looked at her. "Well, it's your call," she told him. "I'd wait, mind you. Make a plan. Not go around looking to be electrocuted, like last time."

"_Plans_," said the Doctor disparagingly. "Yecchy sort of word, isn't it? _Plan_. Plaaan. Puh-_lahnn_."

"Well, it is the way you're saying it. I have a question, by the way."

Leaning on the console across from Xan, the Doctor seemed to be a bit unwilling to spare much time. "Is this socialization again?"

"Only for as long as necessary. It's just... in his story, the Maven said he chose his title after graduating college. He hadn't been the Maven up until then... he said his designation was... Yaren... Yarentarnauturon..." She paused, leaving it a half-question, checking to see if she had it right. When the Doctor nodded, Xan continued. "So all Time Lords get designations...?"

"All _Gallifreyans_ do. They aren't the same. Not all of us end up becoming Time Lords. It's not something you're born being... a _lord_ of anything... don't know why they do it like that anywhere else. You have to earn a title to be a Time Lord. And you have to have a designation before then. No names. Never use names."

"Yaren certainly sounded like a name to me. What's the difference between a name and what people call you?"

"Because you don't keep it forever. You give it up. You can have the same title or designation as someone else did, or will. Or... It's like a license plate on a car. It identifies you, but it's not something sticky. You can change it whenever."

"And names, they do... stick?"

"Before you're born and long after you die," said the Doctor gravely. "From the beginning of time to the end. Forever."

"Like when they retire baseball numbers," Xan said, without thinking.

He sighed. "Er... something like that, yes."

In the awkward pause, the Doctor inspected his screwdriver clip, unwisely flicked knobs on his smart suit, looked at his armscreen. Xan reached for the Maven's book, and glanced at the title for the first time. _A History of Things_, she translated.

"Well, that's... general..."

"What is?"

"The title of the book." She tilted it towards him.

"Oh... yes..." The Doctor seemed a little fidgety, or at least more than normal. "Aren't you going to _ask?_" he suddenly said, as if he couldn't bear it any longer.

"Ask what? What would I-?"

The Doctor grinned and wriggled a little, like a shy boy asking a girl to dance. "Aren't you going to ask what _my _designation was?"

Xan's face filled with alarm. "Oh, no, I wasn't going to..." She swallowed, then gave the Doctor a nervous smile. "I wouldn't," she said resolutely. "I wouldn't ask something like that."

The Doctor's eyes widened, then relaxed in good humor. "It's not like asking my _name_ or anything... it's not a big deal..."

She held out both hands frantically. "No, no, don't tell me!" She got up. "I haven't done anything... I mean, I feel like I should have to _earn _something like that..."

And to his mild surprise, the Doctor understood what she meant. It didn't make it any less amusing. "All right," he said, laughing. "You do something particularly brilliant and I'll tell you. Sound good?"

Xan nodded, then collapsed onto the couch again, relieved.

And on the other side of the room, the door opened, and the Maven appeared in the shadow beyond, looking more youthful and awake than ever before. The Doctor twisted about and as he did so, he heard Xan leap up again, coming to a halt in her self-designated spot at his side.

"I'm... _so_ sorry," exclaimed the Maven. "You must be so confused, me running off like that all the time, but the experiments are why I'm here, after all. I've just found something _incredible_, something you simply _must _see! Directions on your armscreens! Don't dawdle, you two! I'll see you there!" And he dove out of sight.

Xan let out a disbelieving huff of air. "We're on a ship of clones," she declared. "And they're all different versions of that man... what must it be like in his _head_... good lord, it's unnerving."

Beside her, the Doctor lifted his left arm in time to catch a map appearing on it, a schematic of a huge labyrinth of rooms, with a route winding through it like a river through ravines carved out by a great glacier using a schizoid GPS. Sounding very pleased about the whole thing, he said, "Well, I suppose we'd better follow then!" Then he nudged Xan in the side. "Likes his science, focused on his work. Disconcerting... rapid mood swings... oh, he's just like you, Xan!"

She snorted and examined the armscreen on her suit. Then a weird thought crawled into her head. "Yes," she agreed carefully. "Just like me... Happy, sad, interested, anti-social..."

"You really have found your man, haven't you...?"

"_At the same time_."

He coughed. "Sorry. _What?_"

"At the _same_ _time_. He's friendly, I'm friendly. He's all blank and anti-social, and then suddenly I'm angry at you... And just now, I'm laughing and... _quirky_ again, and he pokes his head in two seconds later with his _science..._" She blinked. "Am I crazy? Is this just in my head?"

The Doctor frowned. "Yes... but _I_ haven't been feeling like that, so if it was some residual psychic effect or ambient emotional... thingy..." He hopped behind her and shuffled her to the door. "But the less we do, the less we find out, eh? Let's follow the strange handsome man who offers us science... after all, you've made a habit of it already, haven't you, Xan?"

"Oh, how very amusing..."

They bickered about the route all the way to the laboratory.

And on the sofa, the book that Xan had been holding seemed to darken, as if a shadow had fallen over it by a hand reaching out to pick it up... but there was no hand. There was nothing casting the shadow. On the pages, the symbols began to shift and curl, until they were taking the paper with it, crumpling like in a fire, spots appearing in it, looking just like a coral reef or a curling, endless fern or a kaleidoscopic oil slick... nibbled at by millions of microcosmic mice...


	17. The Incredible Something

**AN: I've made up my mind about who the Maven is... and some of you may have guessed it from the other story I just put up. :) Enjoy.**

The Maven wondered if the Doctor and his friend had gotten turned around somehow. How they could misread such simple directions was beyond him, but the fact was, they weren't here yet.

In the dark room, the air was fresh and yet stagnant, free of any pollutants but free of just about everything else. It was high-altitude without the height and altitude, because the less interference from matter, the better.

At the far end of the room, through panes of rippling glass and rows of test trays, was an incinerator, and dotted all along the walls were hand sanitizer units and even a few large Earth-like fire extinguishers that didn't contain water or foam, but more of the unique and highly potent cleansing fluid that was found inside the sanitizers. Because a fire in the lab would be nothing compared to a bacterial infection.

As he pulled on gloves soaked in the soap, the Maven winced. Over the months, his hands had become raw, and now using the cleanser stung every time. Even though the doorframe had an automatic anti-bacterial curtain effect installed, there was the small chance that one day it would turn itself off. If it hadn't already.

And then, thinking this, the Maven began to worry whether it was poor navigating skills that was taking his guests so long. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to have them wandering alone, through the bowels of his TARDIS. Although they did have the smart suits on, which meant he could track them, monitor their body signs and location. So he didn't have to wait to find out if... He reached for his arm console.

But before his hand reached the screen, the Maven had perceived voices and footsteps, and he let his arm unclench in relief.

"Do you know," he heard the Doctor say, "I think we aren't far from where the TARDIS is. Look at these little marks there, and that circle. Isn't that the place we were in? See, this would be how we went from there to the console room."

"Oh, good work. At least _one_ of us understands these directions, then."

"No, no, no, it's all very simple, look at it. Twisty thing means a stair, oval is a door, and I think the lightning bolts are... lightning bolts? Oh, no, that's not right. We've gotten turned around somewhere, this can't be it..."

"The red's a lot shorter now, isn't it... oh, that's the route. No, that's got to be it right there. Over that way."

"There's nothing _there_, Xan. We're not at the right... No, I remember, these are 3-dimensional maps... oh, boll- Xan, I think we're on_ top_ of the lab."

A sonic whine.

"There, see, look at how it's all the way down there and we're all the way up here..."

"I didn't know it did _holograms_," Xan was saying as the voices drifted away again. "You should have _said_. How was I supposed to know that it could do that? See, now it makes _sense_..."

The Maven put a hand over his eyes.

* * *

><p>The Doctor reached out and slapped the door in front of him. "This is it," he said confidently. "We're here."<p>

"I think that if you'd _mentioned_ something about the maps being 3D..."

"Xan, just be nice and normal for once, okay? Thanks." He leaned on the wall, slightly short of breath. "We could have taken things a bit slower, you know."

"Yes, but we might get crazy Maven instead of nice Maven then. Wonder what he's like now... it's so _creepy_. I never know what to expect..."

"Well, if you and he are some kind of sync, then I suppose you'll know... I'm still not _getting_ it though... why am I not getting it?" The Doctor tried to concentrate, tried to make pieces fit. "Disruption of cortical connectivity, that's what he said. That's important. No. It isn't. But it _has_ to be. You, him, not me - Why? Static building up in the coils... and the _soap_. What is it about the _soap?_ Why do I keep thinking about the... That's the problem with being a genius," he told Xan as he pressed the door open. "Brain keeps on getting ahead of itself... Hang on... What?"

The room he'd thought was the destination was a small supply closet, filled with goggles and test tubes with tiny monitors on them, and lots of bottles of soap.

Off to their left, a nearby door opened and the Maven emerged. "What are you doing in there?" he asked mildly. "Come on, don't waste time."

The Doctor hastily shut the closet door and turned to Xan. "See?" he said, sounding exasperated. "Wrong door. I _told_ you it was the wrong one, but did you listen? No. Never listens. That's you, Xan. The not-listen-y one. Getting us turned around... OW. Oh, look at that, clumsy, too. Stepping on people's feet like that..." He waltzed past the Maven and vanished into the lab.

When the Maven gave her a sympathetic shrug, Xan felt like she had to clarify things, but for a moment was afraid she would be too powerfully embarrassed to speak. "It wasn't _me_," she eventually managed. "I was following _him_. He just made that all up, really, he did... oh, never mind."

She kept her head down and shuffled into the lab, feeling very naked, as if her thoughts were being read again, deduced out of who knew what, but this time by a stranger. It set her teeth on edge in a distracting way, to think of it. And it was hard not to. There was the feeling that something was creeping into the back of her mind and unraveling it into numbers...

"Gloves," said the Maven, out of nowhere.

"What?" Xan rubbed her temple and looked for the Doctor. He had wandered off down a row of test trays, and he had his glasses on. When he reached out to idly poke a glass cylinder, Xan saw that his hands were covered with a film of clear rubber. "Oh. Of course." She reached behind her head and felt for her braid, then swiftly wrapped it up into a lumpy bun and instants later there was a snap as she let go of the hair band that had magically appeared in her fingers.

"You do that often," the Maven stated neutrally. "The motions are very rehearsed."

"Long hair and lab work tend not to mix."

"But you haven't cut it," he said, again in a very factual way, touching a few strands that hadn't been captured in the bun.

Xan shook her head slowly. "I wouldn't really feel myself without the hair."

From among the shelves of scientific equipment, the Doctor called, "You didn't keep plants in these, by any chance? This looks like hydroponics to me..."

"Redandar redgrass; _Kb. Poa rubrus_. I was trying to see how the conditions in the Before would affect their growth."

"Hold it right there," Xan muttered. "_Poa rubrus_? That's not in Linnaean nomenclature, by any chance? Latin?"

"Translator matrix at work," the Doctor said quickly, because he'd heard her. "That's why you hear the _Kb._ Means Kasterborous variety. That's our constellation... and before you ask, a constellation means a group of star systems that form an interconnected biosphere. Not like what your Ancient Greeks thought of it. Redandar redgrass... it's like pea plants. Common experimental model." He turned to the Maven. "And what happened to them?"

"Got sick and died," the Maven said quickly. "It's what alerted me to the poisonous effects of this dimension. I had to incinerate them."

"Why incinerate?" the Doctor shot back with just as much speed. "Why not keep them around to study? Look at the degraded DNA-"

"I had already collected all the data necessary."

"Where's the data, then? I'd like to see what happened to the plants."

The response came back without a pause, perhaps too quickly. "Stored in the archives of the TARDIS, of course. You may retrieve any and all of my research from the interface terminals in the walls..."

"Those wouldn't be the panels like the one in the decontamination room, would they...?"

"Of course," the Maven answered, with a slight bow.

Xan became aware of the tension in the air, and had a feeling that the two Time Lords had sparred somehow, and it looked like the Maven had won. The Doctor leaned back and relaxed slowly, but he seemed to have conceded defeat.

"I did bring you here for a reason, though," the Maven said smoothly, and beckoned with one hand. "Follow me."

Xan sidled up to the Doctor as they walked behind the Maven, and she gave him a furtive look that mean she wanted to talk. "He knows," she whispered.

"Oh? What does he know?" the Doctor asked, loftily feigning ignorance.

"Whatever it is that you know about him that you aren't telling me," Xan said, slightly irritated. "He knows you know what he knows, but _I_ don't know it, so I think you had better tell me..."

"He knows I know he knows, but you don't? Ha! Make _sense_, Xan." He strolled ahead, leaving Xan a bit confused and very disgruntled. She wondered if punching the Doctor in the eye would be acceptable in the presence of company. Perhaps not.

So in the end, Xan was bringing up the rear, and this was amplified by the fact that she kept on stopping to examine specimens or charts or scrawled notes in Gallifreyan shorthand, which she tried (and failed) to read.

"Here," the Maven finally declared. He put out a hand to halt Xan and the Doctor, and then turned to them, eyes glittering with excitement. "_This_ is what I called you down to see."

It was a giant glass sphere floating in the middle of a round, otherwise empty room, and within the sphere was darkness - colorful, crumpled, detailed darkness. If the strange architecture of the Before really was coral, then this was its aquarium.

The sphere was not touching the ground. It was not affixed to anything, but it was completely stationary, not bobbing or moving. There was a circle of interface panels on the walls, and one on a stand near the center, all facing the sphere, and Xan wondered if they were putting out some sort of levitation field to keep this odd bubble in place.

The Doctor's eyes didn't widen, like Xan's had. His look of concentration only deepened, which meant he was actually quite surprised. He only _looked_ 'surprised' when he was actually pleased. And he wasn't exactly pleased now.

"This is what you meant by samples," he said carefully. "You had a piece of the Before inside your TARDIS all this time..."

"Not the whole time. And it's perfectly contained-"

"Until you experiment on it," he qualified darkly. Xan had never seen the Doctor this _focused_. His eyebrows had reached their nadir, and his nostrils were actually flaring - it was weirdly inhuman.

"The states of matter never interact-"

"Except by choice. That's what you said. So does that mean only if you choose it to, or only if _it_ chooses to?" he said, with lawyerly precision.

This round (but Xan still couldn't figure out why they were clashing, or what over) it was the Maven who backed down, and the Doctor who won, but it wasn't an answer to his question he was looking for, apparently. With a slightly shaken look, the Maven turned back to the ring of panels. "These aren't scanners," he said at last, choosing to address Xan instead of the Doctor. "Do you know why it would be useless to scan this mass? Why the information would be irrelevant?"

In response, Xan removed her phone from her pocket and spun through her apps to the video feature. "Because you can't see it," she said simply, holding up the phone and showing the Maven the screen, where the lab, panels, and sphere were all reflected... but on the camera screen, the sphere was empty. "Light doesn't interact with it."

"But our eyes do. Or, perhaps, our minds, which interpret it as an image. So..." The Maven removed the glove from his left hand and placed his palm on the standing panel, and the other screens around him flickered to life. "This was my masterpiece. The Safe Eye. The way the computers make sense of the image is by literally connecting to my-" His breath caught in his throat, and his eyes widened for a second. "- optic nerve... sorry, it's just a bit..." He winced. "... uncomfortable..."

And on the screens of the interfaces lining the wall, there was the queer Before at last. The Maven blinked, and the screens turned dark for a half-moment. He turned to look at Xan, and suddenly her repeated face filled the wall, and she looked away, slightly embarrassed. She could see on the walls _exactly_ what the Maven was seeing, down to the varying depth of field. She could see his eyes focus and unfocus, and when he looked at the wall, there was an eerie tunnel effect, like in a mirror.

He lifted his hand, and all the images vanished. "So this is what I had so far. These computers work on shape, these on color, these on brightness, these on motion. All the aspects of the image are sorted out and then converted into numbers, variables, and so on. Trying to find a mathematical explanation behind it."

"And so what did you find?" the Doctor asked impatiently. "You sounded all excited, all '_Ouu_, _I'm going to show you something incredible,_' but what _is_ it that you-?"

"I found _this_." The Maven unhooked his screwdriver and held it out like a remote. On all the screens, the circles and shapes of the Gallifreyan numeral and writing system flashed by, some bits growing, some bits shrinking, until there was just one complex symbol illuminated on the walls.

The Doctor inhaled and then didn't breath out again for a full fifteen seconds. Now he looked surprised, and excited, too. He pushed his fingers through his hair and stared and stared and then finally whispered, "_I see it._"

"Well, of course. It's fairly obvious what it-"

"No, I _see_ it," the Doctor said, still in the same tone of wonder. "I get it now... I think I know what it _all_ means... what it is... Of _course!_ Oh, that's just... _brilliant!_" He spun about in a dance of joy. "That's incredible! I need a computer... no! By hand! A piece of paper, then, a _really big_ piece of paper... and..." He was gesticulating frantically now, his fingers jerking through the air as if crumbling bits of cheese. "Books! Physics books- _no._ Do it in my _head_." He raced for the lab exit. "I'll be in my TARDIS!" he called back to Xan. "Don't bother with a route, I can extrapolate one..."

"Oh, _now_ he's mister visual spatial," Xan said, exasperated. "Lovely. Run off without me..."

Then the Doctor came skidding back. "Make that Standard English, will you?" he said to the Maven, and pointed to the symbol. "She can't read Gallifreyan that well yet. But seriously Xan, you'll see in a second why I-" And apparently he couldn't be bothered to finish his own sentence, because he vanished once more.

The Maven seemed innocently surprised. "Is he always like that? Frowning one second, grinning the next?"

"_You're_ asking?" said Xan sarcastically. The Maven raised his eyebrows in polite confusion, and Xan sighed and shrugged it away. "Never mind."

"He asked for it to be in English, didn't he? I suppose you'll recognize this equation..." the Maven said, pressing a button on the screwdriver, and then typing a command onto the keyboard that appeared on the standing panel.

Xan blinked. "You _suppose?_"

In a plain, sans-serif font, the letters easily a foot and a half high, read: **F=ma**.


End file.
